CDC Muddies The Message: There Is No Substitute For Colonoscopy.

Mike Magee The CDC and colon cancer in the U.S. are back in the news. This time, it’s the warning that colon screening rates have flattened out. Roughly 1/3 of Americans (23 million people) in the screening age range (50 to 75) have had no screening of any type.(1,2) For a cancer that’s the number […]

JAMA Early Release – “Guideline Panels Should Rarely Formulate Strong Recommendations”.

The Optimal Practice of Evidence-Based Medicine Incorporating Patient Preferences in Practice Guidelines FREE ONLINE FIRST Victor M. Montori, MD, MSc1,2,3; Juan Pablo Brito, MBBS1,2,3; M. Hassan Murad, MD, MPH1,2,3 “Guideline panelists must recognize, with humility, the challenges they face in working often without access to informed patient preferences and acknowledge that their recommendations should rarely assume uniform patient values and contexts in […]

HealthCare.gov: Time To Take A Deep Breath

Mike Magee I experienced my first beta installation of a health information system in 1987 at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, MA. It was my first hospital administration job and an eye opener. The company was Technicon, an IT firm that began in 1965 as a cooperative effort between Lockheed and El Camino Hospital out […]

Do We Need A Journalistic Code of Ethics For Doctor Politicians?

Mike Magee There are now 20 doctors in Congress – 16 Republicans and 4 Democrats. That’s pretty significant, especially in an age of transformative health reform and debate. As the date for the opening of the Affordable Care Act approached, Republican doctor-politicians were pushed far into the limelight by their party to add credibility to […]

A Second Look At The Affordable Care Act and American Exceptionalism.

Mike Magee Irrespective of the current stand-off, and posturing posing as debate, six years ago, in 2007, I wrote a piece that analyzed the Boeing Dreamliner project and asked the following questions: “If you wanted to build a new health care system — a vehicle that would transport us to wellness, productivity, security and happiness — where […]

JAMA Feature: Consensus Growing On Next Steps In Sustainable Health Reform

The September 30, 2013 JAMA article, The Elusive Path to Health Care Sustainability by John C. Lewin, MD; G. Lawrence Atkins, PhD; Larry McNeely, MPA reviews various proposals with an eye toward consensus building. They say: “Most significantly, the proposals reveal broad, if not always unanimous, agreement about how to advance the principles they espouse. This agreement offers the basis for crafting the […]

Grandparents Should Be Playful.

Mike Magee These are our 9 grandchildren. And this is my baseball glove from when I was a little leaguer. What’s the connection. Well it’s this memory of my grandfather having a catch with me one day in my back yard. A playful memory. Maybe I remember it because it was such a rare occurrence. […]

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