Category Archives: General

Alarming Rates of Life-Threatening Patient Nondisclosures

A patient’s full disclosure of medically relevant information to their clinician is essential to ensuring all-encompassing health support, developing successful treatment strategies and guaranteeing optimal outcomes. This is especially true in cases of imminent threat, which range from drug and substance abuse habits to domestic violence incidents. Previous research has revealed that patients often choose not to share details about certain behaviors, such as lack of exercise or poor diet, in fear of being judged or reprimanded. However, relatively little knowledge was available thus far about the disclosure rates for life-threatening factors.

While it is essential for primary care providers to be aware of all details affecting patient health, a recent study indicates that nearly half of patients withhold potentially life-threatening information from their physicians. Aiming to determine the prevalence of patient nondisclosure about imminent threats and identify the common underlying reasons, researchers evaluated data from 4,510 Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and Survey Sampling International (SSI) survey respondents.

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 The Complexities of Physician Compensation

Although overall physician salaries continue to rise steadily, the latest research reveals the caveats and complexities of physician compensation, such as a widening gender pay gap and vast differences between specialties. Published annually, the Medscape Physician Compensation Report is the most comprehensive and widely used physician salary survey in the United States, analyzing compensation, hours worked, time spent with patients, and what practitioners find the most rewarding and challenging about their jobs. Over 20,000 U.S. physicians across 30 specialties responded to this year’s online survey, delivering both good and bad news about the state of the healthcare system.

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A New Therapy for Osteoporosis

Currently, an estimated 10 million people in the United States suffer from osteoporosis, with a disproportionate number of affected women. Caused by thyroid problems, aging, low body weight, hormonal dysfunctions, and other conventional risk factors, osteoporosis greatly increases the likelihood of fractures – especially in the spine, hip, and forearm. Fragility fractures are very common and dangerous; they not only increase morbidity and mortality rates, but they also greatly reduce mobility and quality of life.

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