Dr. Blair Erb of Bozeman Deaconess Health Group, located in Bozeman, MT, is a Trustee of the American College of Cardiology and sits on the Clinical Quality Committee steering committee. He is board certified in Internal Medicine and in Cardiovascular Disease. His special interests include echocardiography, valvular heart disease and risk factor modification. Dr. Erb… Read more »
Blog Category: Letters from the Foundation
Selling Proton Therapy to the Public: High Costs Without Benefit
Arriving in a train station in a Northeast city the other day, I was struck by the number of advertisements for proton therapy at a local academic medical center (AMC) plastered throughout the station and in local subways. The ads feature a bicycle racer with the tag line: “THE WIND IN YOUR FACE IS WORTH… Read more »
Why Professionalism Matters: A Patient’s Point of View
As an employee of the ABIM Foundation, I’ve batted around the phrase “medical professionalism” for several years but it didn’t really hit home for me until I encountered it – and the lack thereof – as a patient. Over the past six months, I’ve logged a few miles in the frequent patient program. I underwent… Read more »
Incurable and Irreversible
My Argentinean mother-in-law is 95 years old and suffers from advancing dementia. She has lived with my sister-in-law for the last eight years and both of her daughters are considered her caregivers. A person comes to the house for about seven hours a day to assist her in activities of daily living. After suffering what… Read more »
It Was Just a Cough: Wasteful and Potentially Harmful Medicine
Over his recent winter break, my 26-year-old son went skiing in Idaho. Fully insured on COBRA, he went to a free-standing urgent care facility in his small resort town for a cough. No culture was taken and he was never asked if he was taking any medications (which he is), but he did receive the… Read more »