by e-Patient Dave | Mar 11, 2011
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. Sherlock Holmes, in Scandal in Bohemia I’ve been reading Jack Wennberg’s new book Tracking Medicine, which is about his...
by e-Patient Dave | Feb 25, 2011
In December we posted about practice variation and shared decision making (SDM), a field of research originated at Dartmouth decades ago and best known as publisher of the Dartmouth Atlas, which describes the amazing amount of unexplained variation in how many doctors...
by e-Patient Dave | Jan 28, 2011
Update 1/29: in a comment, Gilles Frydman pointed out that Newsweek’s Sharon Begley wrote this article almost two months before the New Yorker piece appeared – and the editors held the article, apparently due to pressure from a pharma advertiser whose...
by e-Patient Dave | Jan 21, 2011
Update 1/22: this was originally in our “Found on the Net” sidebar, but it’s attracted enough comments that it belongs in the mainstream. I was researching the coverage of statins on Health News Review, the great e-patient resource we’ve often...
by e-Patient Dave | Jan 13, 2011
A recurring theme on this blog is the need for empowered, engaged patients to understand what they read about science. It’s true when researching treatments for one’s condition, it’s true when considering government policy proposals, it’s true...
by e-Patient Dave | Dec 29, 2010
Kent Bottles MD is one of the best healthcare thinkers I’ve met. Yesterday he completed a two-part tour de force on The Health Care blog titled “The Difficult Science.” Here are part 1 and part 2. This is about “how do we know what we think we...
by Susannah Fox | Dec 28, 2010
Jessie Gruman’s Journal of Participatory Medicine commentary, “Evidence That Engagement Does Make a Difference,” reminded me of a talk delivered by Alice Tolbert Coombs, M.D., last September: As you listen to Dr. Coombs’s chilling story about...
by e-Patient Dave | Dec 20, 2010
Headline and body edited Oct 6, 2013: the original post talked about “practice variation,” but that was bad wording. The problem is unwarranted practice variation: variation that, when studied, is not warranted by actual differences between cases....
by e-Patient Dave | Dec 12, 2010
All, if you have a story where you were affected by being involved (or not) in a medical decision, please see my request at “Help Me Represent You” below. Same if you have points you want me to bring to this seminar’s attention. I feel extremely fortunate...
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