Sloppy Prescribing and “Unlearned Intermediary” Law

Movantik Ad for OID Mike Magee The term “learned intermediary” is a legal term, first used in 1966, and defined by the Fifth Circuit Court as follows: “Prescription drugs are likely to be complex medicines, esoteric in formula and varied in effect. As a medical expert, the prescribing physician can take into account the propensities […]

The Future of Physician Prescribing: An Historical Perspective

Mike Magee The right to prescribe medicines has been a privilege granted by our society with near exclusivity to physicians. It has been actively protected from encroachment by physician organizations usually on the basis that the physicians education and training is clearly superior to others and translates into better prescribing decisions. This privilege has also […]

God Speed, Chick Koop!

C. Everett Koop was born in 1917, three years after my father. Both men were consummate and courageous physicians in the best sense of the word. By this I mean three things: 1) They were completely dedicated to their patients, so dedicated that their families sacrificed in many large and small ways to assure that […]

Health Professional Collaboration Inside and Outside The Hospital

Mike Magee Ten days ago, my wife and I were blessed with the arrival of our 8th and 9th grandchildren – two little girls, Charlotte and Luca. We were also introduced for the first time, as health consumers, to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). The girls came early, at 34 weeks, and are working […]

My Holiday Gift To You: Advanced Professionalism

Mike Magee What an eventful year it has been for HealthCommentary. In reflecting back on the many concepts and visions we have shared together – universal access married to individual and family responsibility for health; Techmanity (technology that humanizes); “Home is where the health is, as well as the heart.”; the 13 part series on […]

Obama’s Goal: A Better America and Better Americans

Mike Magee Then Senator Obama, on the Senate floor in 2005 said, “We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom; the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African American, or gay, or disabled, or old.” (1) He wasn’t talking […]

Absent Joy, Can Medicine Sustain Professionalism?

Eli Ginzberg PhD (1911 – 2002) Here’s the question: Is is possible to sustain professional behavior in a setting that is incapable of supporting personal and professional growth, and a system where money trumps joy most of the time? Last week, I had the opportunity to spend two days at the University of North Carolina […]