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(Still in progress)
The Webmaster is constantly ferreting out sound medical information on the Internet and beyond. Regular articles will be posted here for the benefit of the public's health knowledge base. Most of these articles will be from the news wire (Reuters) and medical institutions publishing research that is quite new.
In additon to medico-legal articles, we want to display statistics about medical issues and statistics about traffic to the overlakehospital.COM site. WE believe our site is one of the first of its kind -- patient controlled information about doctors and their misdeeds. The scales of justice have just been tipped to the patient. "Quid Pro Quo, Dr. Lecter" -- Silence of the Lambs
"Wherever we look upon this earth, the opportunities take shape within the problem."
Nelson Rockerfeller 1908-1979
March 1, 2001
WASHINGTON (AP) - The nation's health care system is a tangled maze that too often leaves Americans with inadequate, outdated, even unsafe therapy, according to a scathing report Thursday that recommends an urgent overhaul to bring 21st century care to more patients.
U.S. specialists know sophisticated and effective ways to fight killers like diabetes, heart disease and breast cancer. But too many patients slog from doctor to doctor in search of one who can even fit a basic physical examination into their crowded schedules, much less one who understands and uses the best treatments, says the report by the Institute of Medicine. "The frustration levels of both patients and clinicians have probably never been higher," the report says. "Health care today harms too frequently and routinely fails to deliver its potential benefits." The report is a follow-up to the institute's groundbreaking 1999 announcement that medical mistakes kill from 44,000 to 98,000 hospitalized Americans a year. While some scientists quibble with the toll, that report has sparked major changes as hospitals nationwide adopted new programs and technology to cut mistakes. The new report looks at overall health systems, from private doctors' offices to insurance. The institute, a private organization that advises Congress on scientific matters, recommends an overhaul toward patient-focused health care that gives Americans more information about their health and makes more doctors follow the latest scientific evidence instead of outdated treatments. It urged Congress to set aside $1 billion over the next three to five years to boost programs that would spur such change. Another big recommendation: If someone gets sick late at night or on a Saturday, and it's not an emergency, they still should be able to get care, even if all they need is a doctor's e-mail recommending self-treatment. That represents "a fundamental shift in the culture of medicine," Dr. Kenneth Kizer of the National Quality Forum, a nonprofit health improvement research group, said after reviewing the recommendations. Round-the-clock care access in particular has been ignored by doctors simply because "it was not a priority. We need to make it a priority." "The medical establishment will have trouble with this," predicted Dr. Lucian Leape of Harvard University, a co-author of the report. But "patients fall through the cracks," he said, and "it doesn't have to be that way. There are ways to make it possible for patients to be taken care of promptly and efficiently and not break the bank."
One of the report's most alarming findings: It can take 17 years for important research discoveries to become accepted and used by the average doctor. Heart medicines called beta blockers, for example, were proved more than 10 years ago to increase significantly a person's chances of survival after a heart attack. But nearly half of heart attack victims still don't receive them, Leape said.
Other problems: Women forced to wait nine weeks for a biopsy after a suspicious mammogram; patients denied access to their own medical records, so that they can't weigh treatment options; paper medical records that emergency rooms can't during a crisis and that are easily lost when patients switch doctors; sufferers of complicated chronic illnesses bounced from specialist to specialist who don't coordinate their care. The health payment system can discourage doctors from doing the right thing, the report said. It cites physicians who give high quality care that controls diabetics' blood sugar only to see their incomes plummet as those patients' need for more expensive care declines. Insurance companies pocket the savings. Patients should receive care whenever they need it, 24 hours a day, and not have to wait months for a nonurgent doctor visit or head for the emergency room, the institute said. That doesn't always mean face-to-face visits, it said, urging more doctors to e-mail patients or set up telephone consultations. It also recommended that insurers cover such care. Nor should treatment vary illogically from doctor to doctor, the report says. It suggested that the government identify 15 of the nation's most problematic diseases and establish care standards for them within five years.
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
OVERLAKEHOSPITAL.COM is currently averaging just over 100 visits a day without being on search engine listings. We will be listed in a matter of days on most engines and expect to increase the website traffic substantially. The hospital's ACTUAL official website, overlakehospital.ORG, is averaging 700 visits a day. In 2.3 years, overlakehospital.ORG has received over 290,000 visits. OVERLAKEHOSPITAL.COM looks forward to our visitor numbers reaching similar levels within 3 years.
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