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Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Hospitals Still Killing Patients

Things used to be very different in the days of the "art of medicine".
Since the impact of Big Insurance, Big PhRMA, and Big Admin, physician and nursing direction in health care delivery has taken a nose dive.
I'd go so far as to say that there isn't even - now - the "science of medicine".
Everything is "cookie cutter" and "standard of care" regardless of whether or not it fits the patient.
The same goes for techinque!

And fluff TV programs like the "doctors" don't give you the real story.

I've been working on protocls for improved infection protocols since the early 90s.  So far there is no change.  And I know things CAN be better.

This Challenge was placed on the table in 2003

http://naturalhealthnews.blogspot.com/2008/09/heads-are-still-in-sand-on-this-one.html

http://naturalhealthnews.blogspot.com/2008/04/improving-hospital-health.html

Our protocol was recently updated in 2010.

And consider how nutritional status plays such an important role in hospital health

Update: Hospitals Still Killing Their Patients

Why aren't hospitals adopting best practices?
Another commentary caught my eye, today, and it is directly related to my comments about the art of medicine.
AMA officially supports "personalized medicine"

In a June 15, 2010 release following the annual meeting of its House of Delegates, the American Medical Association noted that the organization now officially supports "personalized medicine as a way to enhance patient care." The release defines personalized medicine (PM) as "health care that is informed by a person's unique clinical, genetic, and environmental information." They continue:
"It has long been known that individual patients respond to the same disease and treatments differently, and the goal of PM is to identify these individual differences so that the  best treatments and preventions can be used. In order to maximize the benefit of PM, the health care workforce needs ongoing education about the use of genetic technologies in clinical care. Adequate oversight and regulation must be implemented, and coverage of clinically useful PM should be considered by insurers."
Comment: Over the last 3 decades, holistic and environmental and naturopathic doctors have argued their distinctiveness from conventional practice in part via responsive to "biochemical individuality" and their provision of "individualized care." This was in opposition to cook-book, reductive, pharma-based protocols that have dominated conventional treatment. Thus, this AMA endorsement seemed notable. Of course, it is also worth adding that it wasn't the individuality of patients as much as the backing of the genetic testing industry that, at this moment in time, brought this endorsement of common sense.
I grew up in the decades when medicine WAS personalized and based on individuality.  I also watched it change over time to what I've coined as "Cookie Cutter" medicine back in the 70s.

I find it quite strange that  the pro-licensing, hybrid-medical naturopaths want you to beleive this is a new concept and something only they know about.

The CAM integrators, trying to hold on to an old idea in medicine will tell you the same as they follow the Newtonian model into a new world where quantum mechanics and string theory rule.

This was the same obstacle I found as a grad student in nursing at an old, Ivy League institution.

And yes institutionalization remains alive and well.

1 comment:

tal said...

AMA officially supports "personalized medicine"


comment: Over the last 3 decades, holistic and environmental and naturopathic doctors have argued their distinctiveness from conventional practice in part via responsive to "biochemical individuality" and their provision of "individualized care." This was in opposition to cook-book, reductive, pharma-based protocols that have dominated conventional treatment. Thus, this AMA endorsement seemed notable. Of course, it is also worth adding that it wasn't the individuality of patients as much as the backing of the genetic testing industry that, at this moment in time, brought this endorsement of common sense.


I think the (your?) comment nails this one. This isn't about the personalized medicine of millennia of acupuncture/TCM , ayurveda & herbalism; the centuries of homeopathy, the decades of naturopathy & orthomolecular medicine .. those holistic modalities which work with the body's innate healing abilities.

Rather, this is about
Pharmacogenomics
: When drug treatment becomes personalized medicine ...the latest in high-tech interventionism which is just around the corner. This may not result in better outcomes for patients but it will surely make piles of money for a select few investors.

From Byron Richards:

"The Von Eschenbach solution will be to evaluate the blood of every patient taking the drug with the FDA’s sophisticated biomarker software. The FDA has already developed the early stages of this software and will continue to perfect its new system of medicine over the next decade. Making a long story short, in order to receive medical care your blood will be evaluated by an FDA-controlled super computer, your genes will be profiled, your genetic weaknesses will be part of your medical record, and you will have an RFID chip in your arm storing your complex biological medical records, tracking your vital signs, and monitoring your whereabouts. If doctors think they have it bad now just wait until they become slaves to the FDA computer’s directions and drug prescriptions – which will no doubt be the latest and most expensive biotech drug experiment."

The AMA statement is simply to generate advance enthusiasm for the next, expensive, top-down control.