Bioethics & Health Disparities

In this issue, Linzer and colleagues found that family practitioners and general internists report high levels of unhappiness about time pressures and practice pace, little sense of control over work conditions, and deficient organizational culture. Primary care as an indispensable set of functions will persist in one form or another; the challenge is to organize it as part of an integrated system that serves the needs of both patients and physicians, enhances quality, and keeps costs within reasonable limits.

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A recent study (RCT) in Annals of Internal Medicine looks into the effects of multi component intervention on quality of life and clinical depression in caregivers and on rats of institutional placement of care recipients in 3 diverse racial groups. Read the rest of this entry »

A new study finds disparities in the Utilization of High-Volume Hospitals for Complex Surgery. This is not surprising at all given the fact that complex surgeries cost more and hospitals and doctors do what ever they can to divert the “self-pays” or lower paying patients to other facilities, defer these procedures or make it more difficult for these patients to have this sort of surgeries done. Read the rest of this entry »