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 [...]
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 – 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 [...]
September 22, 2009 – 3:14 pm
The organisers of a forum on pharmaceutical regulation, to be held in Adelaide on Thursday, are promising a “robust discussion”. I hope there are plans for a podcast as I’m sure there will be plenty of interest in the debate.
Healthy Skepticism is hosting the panel discussion, at the Women and Children’s Hospital, to examine questions [...]
September 17, 2009 – 2:11 pm
Drew Dawson, one of the gurus of sleep research, has written a long and informative piece for Crikey today about the issue of long working hours, fatigue and health service safety.
Dawson contributed to the fatigue risk management guidelines which recently caused Queensland Health some media grief, and today he’s taken us well beyond those [...]
September 9, 2009 – 3:30 pm
The Parliamentary Secretary for Health, Mark Butler, issued this release yesterday, clearly intending to allay concerns raised by the Sydney Morning Herald’s stories sounding the alarm about the marketing and use of medical devices.
Instead, he seems to have added fuel to the fire – at least, according to Dr Ken Harvey, who argues that the [...]
August 19, 2009 – 12:23 pm
Health policy analyst Dr Lesley Russell has written an indepth analysis of the state of health reform in the US for the online publication, Inside Story.
In this piece for Croakey she writes about the lessons from the US in using financial incentives to improve hospital care:
“As Australia looks to improve the quality of health care [...]
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. [...]
