Quotes About Healthcare

At times, they made her wonder if she had the right doctors

The effort and expense it took to keep him going were enormous

The soaring cost of health care has become the greatest threat to the long-term solvency of most advanced nations, and the incurable account for a lot of it. In the United States, 25 percent of all Medicare spending is for the 5 percent of patients who are in their final year of life, and most of that money goes for care in their last couple of months that is of little apparent benefit.

pay doctors to give chemotherapy and to do surgery but not to take the time required to sort out when to do so is unwise.

those who saw a palliative care specialist stopped chemotherapy sooner, entered hospice far earlier, experienced less suffering at the end of their lives—and they lived 25 percent longer.

an average of $94,000 during the last year of life with a metastatic breast cancer. Our medical system is excellent at trying to stave off death with $12,000-a-month chemotherapy, $4,000-a-day intensive care, $7,000-an-hour surgery. But, ultimately, death comes, and few are good at knowing when to stop.

An inherent tension exists between brevity and effectiveness. Cut too much and you won't have enough checks to improve care. Leave too much in and the list becomes too long to use. Furthermore

defrailulation specialists

People live longer and better than at any other time in history. But scientific advances have turned the processes of aging and dying into medical experiences, matters to be managed by health care professionals. And we in the medical world have proved alarmingly unprepared for it.

Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them the basic comforts they most need.

The burdens for today's caregiver have actually increased from what they would have been a century ago.

According to Block, about two-thirds of patients are willing to undergo therapies they don't want if that is what their loved ones want. The

Medicine has become the art of managing extreme complexity—and a test of whether such complexity can, in fact, be humanly mastered.

From World War II onward, the picture shifted radically. Sulfa, penicillin, and then numerous other antibiotics became available for treating infections. Drugs to control blood pressure and treat hormonal imbalances were discovered. Breakthroughs in everything from heart surgery to artificial respirators to kidney transplantation became commonplace. Doctors became heroes, and the hospital transformed from a symbol of sickness and despondency to a place of hope and cure.

Emanuels described a third type of doctor-patient relationship, which they called "interpretive." Here the doctor's role is to help patients determine what they want. Interpretive doctors ask, "What is most important to you? What are your worries?" Then, when they know your answers, they tell you about the red pill and the blue pill and which one would most help you achieve your priorities.

Ariadne Labs

A study led by the sociologist Nicholas Christakis asked the doctors of almost five hundred terminally ill patients to estimate how long they thought their patient would survive and then followed the patients. Sixty-three percent of doctors overestimated their patient's survival time. Just 17 percent underestimated it. The average estimate was 530 percent too high. And the better the doctors knew their patients, the more likely they were to err.

You have a cough that won't go away—and then? It's not science you call upon but a doctor. A doctor with good days and bad days. A doctor with a weird laugh and a bad haircut. A doctor with three other patients to see and, inevitably, gaps in what he knows and skills he's still trying to learn.

In a year, fewer than three hundred doctors will complete geriatrics training in the United States, not nearly enough to replace the geriatricians going into retirement, let alone meet the needs of the next decade. Geriatric psychiatrists, nurses, and social workers are equally needed, and in no better supply.

He was immediately taken aback, recognizing that an empty stomach is what we require for patients going to surgery. I tried

Our most cruel failure is in how we treat the sick and the aged is the failure to recognise that they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer; that the chance to shape one's story is essential to sustaining meaning in life.

their waiting lists are typically months long.

In this work against sickness, we begin not with genetic or cellular interactions, but with human ones. They are what make medicine so complex and fascinating.

the fee can be as much as twenty thousand dollars):