Cancer for Christmas: Making the Most of a Daunting Gift » The Healthcare Industry

Think All Docs Are Created Equal? Think Again.

Casey Quinlan — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 13:00:23 +0000

Interesting piece hit the virtual newsstand today in the medical journal Health Affairs (paid article access only) as well as the NY Times and every other news outlet in the US: in the US, care provided by foreign-born and foreign-trained doctors equals that of US-born/US-trained docs.

However, US-born and overseas-trained doctors fell short, particularly when they were treating heart disease. In the Health Affairs study, treatment by those docs meant longer hospital stays and a slightly higher death rate.

There’s a doctor shortage in the US, which has been filled by doctors who attended medical school in their home countries, and completed a residency here. Non-US doctors – Indian, Pakistani, eastern European, African, Latin American – have helped fill the doc-gap, and have faced some prejudice about their level of expertise and care.

Turns out the ones you have to worry about are the US-born doctors who – likely because of lower test scores and GPAs that kept them from being selected by US medical schools – should be the focus of whatever prejudice a patient might feel about who they want on their healthcare team.

When you select a doctor, what are your criteria? Are you turned off by an accent? Given the stats in the Health Affairs report, you should reconsider your prejudice. Mortality rates in the cases studied (6,113 patients with heart disease) gave foreign-born international graduates the edge: 5%. US born and trained: 5.5%. And US-born, overseas-trained? 5.8% mortality rate.

In raw numbers:

docs born & trained outside the US would have lost 306 patients of the 6,113
docs born & trained here would have lost 338 of the 6,113
docs born here & trained overseas would have lost 355 of the 6,113

I think that maybe an accent could be a good thing.

If you would have trouble trusting a doctor with an accent, start examining your reasons why. And make sure you ask your doctor(s) where they trained, even if they don’t have an accent.

If they were born in Paducah and trained in Peshawar, caveat emptor.

Proactive Patient Podcast 2 – Get a Translator!

Casey Quinlan — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:56:41 +0000

A terrific post on the equally terrific blog by Dr. Kevin Pho – who makes me wish I lived in Nashua, NH, until I remember how bad the winters are up there – inspired the second Proactive Patient Podcast by Dorothy Erlanger and yours truly.

Dr. Danielle Ofri makes a great point, that doctors have to serve as translators as well as diagnosticians, helping patients understand their conditions, not just telling them what those conditions are – too frequently in jargon that the average Joe or Jane wouldn’t understand without a medical encyclopedia.

Give it a listen – thanks!

Need a Speaker for a Health Care Event?

Casey Quinlan — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:29:10 +0000

I can promise a funny, inspirational, and informative presentation about managing health care, dealing with a medical nasty-gram (like cancer!), developing a relationship with your health care providers, and beating the odds.

Get in touch with me here: info [at] cancerforchristmas.com, or by phone at (804) 467-5716.

I’d like to help as many people as possible to become active participants in their health care!