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Blog Topic: Health Care Quality and Safety

  • More Tests, More Answers? Not Always

    April 09, 2012

    The Choosing Wisely initiative, announced last week by the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation, aims to spark conversation among both doctors and their patients about the types of tests and treatments that are likely to be unnecessary, and perhaps even harmful. More tests, the group explains, does not always mean better care – and overuse of these diagnostics is a huge contributor to the United States’ surging medical costs. The issue of overtesting is a special challenge for emergency physicians. Most of the time, patients are unknown to them, and sometimes, unconscious or otherwise too sick to explain their symptoms or medical history. That often means starting from scratch with determining what might be wrong, and making calls to their previous physicians doesn’t always yield answers, especially during off hours.

  • The Affordable Care Act – A “Supremely” Big Debate

    March 26, 2012

    David Grande, MD, MPA, assistant professor of Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine and a senior fellow in the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, helps break down the oral arguments the Supreme Court will hear regarding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

  • A Starr's Take on Health Care Reform

    February 28, 2012

    Earlier this year, the Penn campus received a visit from one of the nation’s most prominent sociologists of medicine and health care –- Paul Starr, PhD. As Joshua Metlay, MD, PhD, professor of medicine and epidemiology in the Perelman School of Medicine, said in his introduction, Starr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Social Transformation of American Medicine (1982), “is the mandatory starting point” in discussions of health care’s future and health care’s reform. As the Republican presidential primaries show, that topic remains one of the most important issues in the nation. Starr is a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University.

  • A Million Chances to Save a Life

    February 23, 2012

    Would you be able to find an automated external defibrillator if someone’s life depended on it? Despite an estimated one million AEDs scattered around the United States, the answer, all too often when people suffer sudden cardiac arrests, is no. In a Perspective piece published online this week in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality Outcomes, Penn Medicine emergency physician Dr. Raina Merchant outlines the tremendous potential associated with greater utilization of AEDs in public places. In cases of ventricular fibrillation – a wild, disorganized cardiac rhythm that leaves the heart unable to properly pump blood through the body, which is the leading cause of sudden cardiac death – quick use of an AED and CPR improve a patient’s chance of surviving by more than 50 percent.

  • The “Thing” of It: Humanism and Professionalism in Medicine

    February 17, 2012

    Educators, researchers, and practitioners across in the United States and abroad have been working to address the rift between personal and impersonal care by developing models that introduce ways to encourage humanism and professionalism to the practice of 21st century medicine.

  • AEDS: A Lifesaver, Not a Liability

    February 09, 2012

    It’s Day 10 of Penn Medicine’s MyHeartMap Challenge, and more than 200 teams have signed on for the hunt, submitting more and more AEDs each day. From the farthest reaches of the city – all the way up in Northeast Philly’s Pennypack Park area to the Philadelphia International Airport in Southwest Philly – and throughout Center City, participants are snapping pictures and sending them to our team.

  • Penn Medicine Kicks Off Heart Month With MyHeartMap Challenge

    February 01, 2012

    To celebrate American Heart Month, the News Blog is highlighting some of the latest heart-centric news and stories from all parts of Penn Medicine. Just in time for the start of American Heart Month, Penn Medicine kicked off the MyHeartMap Challenge yesterday. For the first time, the wisdom of the...

  • “A Warning Bell About Vaccine Fear-Mongering”

    September 21, 2011

    Arthur Caplan, PhD, director of the Center for Bioethics in the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, last week challenged Michele Bachmann to produce evidence to back up her televised claims that the HPV vaccine – which prevents the strains of the virus that cause cervical cancer -- has "very dangerous consequences" including causing “mental retardation.”

  • "Mystery Shopper" Studies: A Science, Not a Trap

    July 27, 2011

    Within hours of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' announcement that they planned to use a group of "mystery shoppers" to study access to primary care across the country, outcry erupted among physicians who felt the study was deceptive and unfair. "Snooping," some called it. A poor use of tax dollars, others said. Days later, the department announced they were putting the effort, which would have surveyed more than 4,000 physicians in nine states, on hold. This week in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Karin Rhodes, an emergency physician and health care policy researcher here at Penn's Perelman School of Medicine -- herself an expert in studies designed using the "secret shopper" method -- responds to the outcry in a "Perspective" piece aimed at taking the so-called "mystery" out of these studies.

  • Save a Life With Your Cell Phone

    July 20, 2011

    A group of Penn Medicine researchers is set to save lives with cell phones cameras -- and they're challenging the public to help. The MyHeartMap Challenge, a contest that will launch this fall, is sending thousands of Philadelphians to the streets to locate as many automated external defibrillators (AEDs) as they can find.

About this Blog

This blog is written and produced by Penn Medicine’s Department of Communications. Subscribe to our mailing list to receive an e-mail notification when new content goes live!

Views expressed are those of the author or other attributed individual and do not necessarily represent the official opinion of the related Department(s), University of Pennsylvania Health System (Penn Medicine), or the University of Pennsylvania, unless explicitly stated with the authority to do so.

Health information is provided for educational purposes and should not be used as a source of personal medical advice.

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