October 24, 2009 – 9:41 am
The United States health system often cops a bad press, but it has some lessons for us when it comes to reporting on quality, says our correspondent in Washington, Dr Lesley Russell.
She writes:
“Last week the 2009 annual report from the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) was released.
The NCQA is a private, not-for-profit organization [...]
October 13, 2009 – 9:04 pm
As mentioned recently, Pfizer is hitting the consumer and medical media in the interests of its combination heart pill, Caduet.
Regular readers may remember that earlier this year Michele Kosky, executive director of the Health Consumers’ Council in WA, asked the TGA and Medicines Australia to investigate whether the consumer advertisement breaches the ban on direct-to-consumer [...]
September 30, 2009 – 11:50 am
How do we know if our general practice/hospital/dentist/aged care service is providing safe and quality care? At the moment, it’s almost impossible to answer this question in any objective manner.
But at least we now have some idea of what sort of questions we should be asking, thanks to a report released this week by [...]
September 25, 2009 – 11:32 am
Following the previous post about informed consent and swine flu vaccination, I thought it might be useful to have a consumer organisation’s view on the issues.
Carol Bennett, executive director of the Consumers Health Forum, is encouraging the public to discuss the pros and cons of vaccination with their health provider, rather than relying on [...]
September 24, 2009 – 6:53 pm
Further to the earlier post about Minister Roxon’s spruiking of swine flu vaccination (you can see various interviews here, here and here – what a busy day she’s had), I’ve been pondering the issue of informed consent.
Below is a document that the Medical Indemnity Protection Society has sent members, making it clear that they will [...]
September 24, 2009 – 10:48 am
Right now, right around the country, well-meaning community groups, including men’s health groups, are out on the hustings, urging all men of a certain age to be screened for prostate cancer.
There are many potential downsides to such simplistic messages.
You can read more about some of them in this article, published today in the SMH and [...]
September 24, 2009 – 8:28 am
Minister Roxon was spruiking the benefits of swine flu vaccination to Fran Kelly this morning and downplaying any potential risks.
Asked about infection control concerns surrounding the use of multidose vials(as outlined in this Crikey story recently), Minister Roxon said these are “very minimal”.
Does she realise what dangerous territory she’s entering here?
Our national infection control guidelines [...]
August 26, 2009 – 10:54 am
Some time ago, an editor with long experience in the medical publishing industry and I were dreaming about creating a new type of health publication that wouldn’t take the narrow focus of so many of the existing professional publications.
It’s not surprising, of course, that magazines like Australian Doctor, Medical Observer or the latter’s new Practice [...]
August 19, 2009 – 10:52 am
The PM made a big deal about the need to ensure treatments are evaluated and backed by good evidence in this widely-reported speech at St Vincent’s Institute for Medical Research in Melbourne last Friday.
He said: “ Patients need treatments, technologies, and procedures for which there is evidence from research that these are safe and effective. [...]
Croakey has previously argued that the Productivity Commission inquiry into public and private hospital performance has overly narrow terms of reference.
Below you can read some more suggestions for the Commission from several Croakey contributors, but first have a look at how much further the debate on hospital performance has advanced in some other countries.
In the [...]
By Croakey
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Also posted in Hospitals, Indigenous health, Media-related issues, evidence-based issues, quality and safety of health care, rural and remote health, surgery
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Tagged hospital performance, Hospitals, Indigenous health, patient safety, Productivity Commission, rural and remote health
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