In rural Maine, Choosing Wisely brought primary care and specialists together to discuss the recommendations – a positive, unintended consequence of the campaign. Early in the development of the campaign, we learned that physicians did a lot of finger-pointing around who was responsible for overuse. The primary care physicians blamed the specialists and the specialists… Read more »
Blog Category: Letters from the Foundation
One Doc’s Reactions to Choosing Wisely®: An Interview with Dr. Blair Erb
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 »
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 »