PHOENIX-With the election of President Barack Obama and with lawmakers in Washington poised to overhaul the health care system, with patients’ faith in their doctors faltering, and with health costs continuing to rise and quality becoming ever more questionable, Gerald B. Healy, MD, took the lectern for his keynote address here as if he were taking the helm of a ship at risk of being capsized by stormy seas.
East Coast, West Coast, Midwest-when it comes to effective marketing techniques, otolaryngologists in private practice sound themes parallel to those shared by their colleagues in academic and group practices.
Medical residents used to work shifts so long that fatigue blurred their vision, clouded their judgment, and overall put them on the brink of mental and physical exhaustion.
A quick scan of course offerings and lecture titles at medical meetings shows that bioentrepreneurship is a growing phenomenon in the United States.
Under intense and growing scrutiny of relationships between industry and physicians, academic health centers, medical professional organizations, and physician practices are grappling with how to guide physicians in their dealings with industry.
Organizational medicine relies on the skills and talents of many people who work hard to contribute their best to the advancement of medical care and, most important, to improving the health and well-being of their patients.
Within the ongoing discussion on the need to reform the delivery of health care in the United States to better balance issues of cost, quality, and accessibility is an underlying issue that, if not sufficiently recognized, will undermine all efforts at reform.
In September, the American Association of Otolaryngologists-Head and Neck Surgeons (AAO-HNS) published the first clinical practice guidelines on the removal of impacted cerumen (Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg 2008;139:S1-S21).
Politics is not a four-letter word.