Healthcare’s performance report: Virginia

That was Virginia’s second visit to the hospital in the ten days of the new year. It also ended up being the last. Virginia was a patient we all knew. She came to the hospital frequently. The aphorism of our intern year was, if you had not taken care of Virginia once, you were not […]

The challenges of tobacco control

The WHO FCTC (Framework Convention on Tobacco Control) has been trying to regulate tobacco production the world over by restricting the use of land available for tobacco farming. The reasoning behind this is  two-fold: first tobacco has been singled out as the greatest preventable cause of death. Second the use of scarce farmland, especially in […]

The Adoption of EMR

It is no news a lot of doctors like to stick up a rather snotty nose to EMR, despite all the rage in town. The defenders of the EMR tend to label such doctors as archetypal Luddites, sticking to their archaic ways and unbecoming of change and the new times. But as is usually the […]

Ensuring universal health care around the himalayas

Two unique experiments in health care are being orchestrated on either sides of the Himalayas. Both China and India are grappling with the ideals of universal health care(UHC): trying to provide equitable and accessible healthcare to the entirety of its populace, an idea that has been up for talks here in Nepal as well for […]

Pirates of the healthcare industry

The New York Times recently did an expose on hospital overbilling by a group of cardiologists at some hospitals owned by the Hospital Corporation of America (HCA). Immediately after a few days, a rather gloating article about how HCA had become the poster boy of Wall Street with its double digit growth strategy appeared. If the […]

Primary care’s woes: It’s in the way you see

Primary care is ever the cinderella-esque tragedy. Ever so maligned, ever engulfed in misery and never really the belle of the ball like she rightfully deserves to be. There may be reasons galore to this. Not least of which is the way primary care work is perceived in this country. Let me illustrate. The primary care […]

Free health care requires infrastructure development

In an attempt to ensure universal healthcare for its people, Nepal started with free health care to a select group of people  in the mid 2000s. The plan met much scepticism, especially from healthcare providers,  when it started out. Five years down the line, it has its fair share of believers. The moral imperative to ensure healthcare to people […]

The case for health information exchanges

Picture a medical  district that bundles more than half a dozen hospitals in the matter of a few square miles, toss in a patient population that walks in and out of every single hospital and what results is a yet another utterly forgettable night at work for an already harried intern. Patient visits are everywhere, […]

How to expand the health care dollar

In the last 30 years health care spending has gone up by almost 30 times, to an unmanageable 2.6 trillions dollars today. Such economic burden is as unbearable as it is outrageous. What drives health care costs? Where does all that money go? Here is a breakdown of the health care dollar. Apparently as it […]

Taming healthcare: here’s how

The New York Times recently published an interesting interview about how to tame runaway health care spending. The subject of that interview is the revered Stanford health economist Victor Fuchs. Mr Fuchs has real clear headed solution as to how to solve America’s runaway health care spending. Now don’t get too excited; this may be […]