Thursday, November 11, 2010
Dr. Mana Kasongo describes two Haiti aftershocks
Dr. Mana Kasongo describes two Haiti aftershocks: "Dr. Kasongo describes the aftershocks."
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Women's media center honors me with profile of 30 extraordinary women in history
Rachell Arteaga is inspired by your work and chose to write about you. Read Rachell’s commentary here:http://womensmediacenter.com/blog/2010/03/mana-kasongo-a-woman-making-history/
Monday, March 15, 2010
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Newsweek Article
http://www.newsweek.com/id/234218
Finally, a reporter that gets to to the crux of the healthcare problem. What good is healthcare reform when you don't have enough physicians to actually see the "newly insured". I have been writing about this since the summer. See my previous post "Letter From an Emergency Room Physician". Kudos Mary Carmichael!
Naomi Klein: Investigative reporter on Haiti
http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2010/02/haiti-creditor-not-debtor
Check out this amazing article. Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine, writes that the Haiti disaster was a man-influenced and that the Haitians are in fact owed reparations for their pain and suffering. It parallels my discussion on the women's media center blog. Klein is one of the most influential investigative reporters of our time
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
radio show concerning reform
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Letter from an Emergency Room Doctor: Healthcare reform
This was originally published on www.blackstarnews.com in the summer of 2009
Letter From An Emergency Room Doctor
By Mana Lumumba-Kasongo
Walking into my emergency room every day is like walking into a war zone. 14, 000 people are losing their healthcare every day due to job losses from the so-called “great recession.” Job losses are nearing 7 million: where can those people turn for treatment?
Sadly, they join the millions of other Americans without coverage who head to emergency rooms around the country seeking primary care or refills for prescriptions, along with the true emergencies. Add the threat of a public health nightmare such as the swine flu , with wall-to-wall masked people in the waiting room, and it’s a prescription for disaster.
Emergency medicine physicians are on the front lines. We observe the devastating effects of healthcare costs on patients and can see firsthand the entire healthcare system at risk of collapse due to escalating costs. I can no longer count the number of patients who come to the emergency room suffering a stroke from uncontrolled high blood pressure because they either can’t afford their medications, can’t see their doctor, or just don’t have a doctor.
The President's address to both Houses called for “honest debate.” Would the nation discuss how to improve the Space Program without including astronauts? Yet, rather than working with doctors, the President in the past has cast us as the “bad guys.” He once claimed doctors would rather amputate a foot than teach a diabetic how to prevent such complications since they could get paid $30,000 for the surgery.
This is false: reimbursement is more in the range of $700-$1500. And what's more, it represents a jaundiced view of physicians. Surely, those of us who see medicine as a vehicle for social justice, and have spent many years preparing for such an honor, deserve to be heard.
We are central to this debate. A recent poll shows that 63% of physicians believe in some form of a public option. As a transformative President, Barack Obama must take this consensus and change the old, simplistic metaphor of healthcare that pits liberals (pro public option) against conservatives (pro tort reform).
As a doctor working in the trenches, I see two important obstacles to health care: deficiency in the number of primary care physicians and medical tort reform. So while I agree with the president that healthcare is a moral, not political issue, an honest discussion must involve doctors; otherwise, the argument for reform while accurate, will be incomplete.
First, primary care.
As of 2006, there were 120 million emergency room visits; at least 30% of those visits were from the uninsured. Emergency room visits cost $90 billion per year, in the past decade alone they have escalated by 26%.
Compounding this problem is the dearth of primary care doctors. What primary physicians there are, are overwhelmed. Wait times are long. Patients are frustrated. They turn to emergency rooms, the most expensive care you can receive. Costs skyrocket.
What's causing this shortage?
Education costs. Contrary to the popular belief that doctors are rolling in dough. Studies say an average new doctor has a staggering $200,000 worth of school debt. This debt load leads doctors away from primary care and towards more lucrative specialties, like cosmetic surgery.
A solution? The reform bill should offer incentives to doctors who choose primary care.
Second, tort reform.
I know that this has been framed as a conservative issue, but it has deeper implications that affect all physicians and patients.
The president was on the money when he said that, “defensive medicine may be contributing to increasing costs.” It's true that the fear of lawsuits can drive doctors into calling multiple (sometimes harmful) tests, referrals, hospitalizations, or prescriptions; fearful of possible malpractice lawsuits. This is a viewpoint that is shared by experts on the left and right of this debate.
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2006 analyzed more than 1,400 malpractice claims and found that in almost 40 percent of cases, no medical error was even involved. So while the cost of malpractice is high, meaning the actual amount paid out in claims, to the tune of $30 billion a year, it’s the threat of malpractice claims that really drives up the cost of healthcare, according to the Massachusetts Medical Society. This is the point pundits have missed when talking about the cost of defensive medicine.
The fear of lawsuits is effectively fracturing the patient-doctor relationship. A common joke among doctors tells you that doctors have long abandoned hope that there would be reform: “There are only two types of doctors: those who are sued and those who are going to be sued.” Ouch!
Estimating the exact dollar amount has been debatable, many experts agree that it is in the billions.
To be sure, medical malpractice does lead to catastrophic events for patients and families, and there should be a mechanism by which patients should be compensated for this. Perhaps, there could be a national fund that could be used to compensate patients for their pain and suffering, and they would receive money based on some sort of criteria. This is how malpractice is handled in New Zealand. This would allow for patients financial well-being, while allowing us to care for our patients without the fear of lawsuits hanging over our heads.
Additionally, physicians need to take some ownership of this problem by policing our own unethical and incompetent physicians through internal reviews and licensure organizations.
We have already started to see the effects of malpractice that go beyond the monetary. The high cost of malpractice is leading to shortages in riskier fields like obstetrics, neurosurgery and emergency medicine across the country. Physicians are retiring earlier, not performing certain procedure, moving to states with friendlier malpractice laws and refusing to take on complex patients. With these trends, finding a physician may become a blood sport in the future.
Like so many of my fellow physicians, I grapple everyday with the realities of our health system, and I have seen first-hand what reform we need: we need more primary care physicians and tort reform, in addition to rein in health insurance and pharmaceutical companies. We’ve said this before and we’ll say it again. I just hope they hear us before the debate is over.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
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