Americans are constantly being told they need a primary care physician. Supposedly the key to good health is having a close relationship with your family doctor. According to a research paper from Stanford and Harvard medical schools we live longer in areas with high concentrations of primary care physicians:
Category: Doctors & Hospitals
Internships Boost Health Care Workers in Rural CO
I grew up in a small town in the middle of nowhere. My parents house was 19 miles East of the Colorado border. The adjacent Colorado counties were so sparsely populated that the ranches were open range. There were no fences. The local hospital where I got my tonsils removed only had 9 beds. The hospital is county-owned, as is the long-term care facility. Some of the local health care providers are subsidized by the county, with free office space and guaranteed incomes. Otherwise, the only health care providers would be miles away in other counties.
Friday Links
- Is Obamacare’s requirement that preventive services be provided with no patient cost sharing unconstitutional?
- New York Times: Older doctors should be given competency exams. One-third of US doctors are 60 years of age or older.
- Have nurse’s license, will travel: The average weekly rate for travel nurses is $3,080 — about $700 less than it was a year ago.
- Since its founding in 1973, the DEA has intercepted a fraction of one percent of illicit drug trades.
- Physicians want to protect their guild from proposals to let nurses do what they are trained and qualified to do.
- Cato paper: “Medical decisionmaking is increasingly under the purview of law enforcement. Practitioners and patients alike are often prejudged as criminals.”
New Alzheimer’s Drug May be a Breakthrough! Or a Dud!
In June of 2021 the Alzheimer’s drug, Aduhelm, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Aduhelm is a monoclonal antibody. It targets a specific protein in the brain that is thought to form plaques in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, causing brain cells to atrophy and die.