The Reimagine Medicine program started with an artist with a long experience of illness and a doctor with a long fascination with storytelling. Together, Ray Barfield and Marina Tsaplina are ready to transform medical education. More
A drug company topped a list of the worst actors in US healthcare for the second year in a row, but other industry sectors—such as hospitals, physicians, and insurers—gained ground in the second annual Shkreli Awards.1 “This year we quite intentionally cast a wider net than just the well known and insane greed of the pharmaceutical sector,” said Vikas Saini, president of the Lown Institute, an advocacy group that bestows the awards, in an email. “We wanted to make the point that profiteering has become rampant and is not confined to any one particular sector of the healthcare enterprise.”
In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lenzer explain why the FDA's proposed changes are unlikely to make a real difference in medical device safety. More
“Whenever pharma or a hospital spends money on advertising, we the patients pay for it — through higher prices for drugs and hospital services,” said Shannon Brownlee, senior vice president of the Lown Institute, a Brookline, Mass., nonprofit that advocates for affordable care. “Marketing is built into the cost of care.” More
Ten years ago, Kathleen Yaremchuk raced to the bedside of a patient inexplicably gasping for breath. Chair of the department of otorhinolaryngology (ear, nose and throat) at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Yaremchuk performed an emergency tracheotomy on the woman, cutting a hole in her windpipe, inserting a breathing tube and saving her life. When Yaremchuk began getting more calls over the following months for mysterious cases of respiratory distress, she launched a study to figure out what was going on. More
How frequently are patients harmed by low-value care in hospitals? A new study sheds light on hospital-acquired complications of unnecessary care. More
One of the things that I’m most proud of about my team’s work is that we didn’t merely grade performance. We offered constructive criticism intended to improve performance. More
An analysis by Modern Healthcare finds that reported spending on community benefits by hospitals leave out important information, and vary widely between hospitals across the country. More
Dr. Lisa Schwartz, expert in overdiagnosis and health care communication, passed away in November 2018. We remember her vast contribution to medicine and journalism. More
We should not just be asking, "Why are we prescribing so many opioids" but also, "Why are we doing so many wisdom teeth extractions?” More
Each year, JAMA Internal Medicine publishes an update on overuse, featuring the top ten most influential articles on overuse from the previous year. Here are some highlights from this year's update! More
Silicon Valley has the fix for primary care and - surprise! - it's more technology. More
In a two-part blog series in Health Affairs, Lown Senior Vice President Shannon Brownlee and primary care doctors Andy Lazris and Alan Roth lay out the reasons behind these major issues and a blueprint to start fixing them. More
This new collaborative series between the Lown Institute and the Journal of the American Family Physician applies the framework of right care — evidence-based, patient-focused, high value care — to common clinical situations. More
Halloween is time for costumes, spooky stories, and... drug advertisements? More
If you thought the only takeaway from ORBITA was "stents don't work," you're missing the point, says Dr. Vikas Saini in Health Affairs. More
Why reporters need to look more carefully at evidence for costly treatments... More
Are omega-3 supplements the "new paradigm" in cardiovascular treatment? Not yet... More
A new report reveals how drugmaker Abbvie has abused the patent system to delay competition for its bestselling drug. More
New research on the CMS bundled payments program show mixed results - Let's break it down. More