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Almost no one wants to enter a nursing home, yet sometimes it’s unavoidable. Since the 1980s a “culture change” movement has been underway. Its objective is to transform nursing homes from their hospital-like, institutional, clinical model, to a resident-centered home-like…

An article in the Lancet advocates the use of placebos for active treatment, according to MedPage Today (Placebos Advocated as Active Treatments).

Finniss and colleagues reviewed the literature on the placebo effect, which suggests that it is far more complicated than many…

An oncologist friend spotted my blog post (Overuse of mammography in elderly women with cognitive impairment) and noticed that I’d been unable to access the full American Journal of Public Health article without paying for it. He shared his copy with…

Much has been made of recent guidelines recommending against routine mammography screening for women in their 40s. I tend to be more cautious than most in my approach to screening exams –more isn’t always better, especially when false positives set…

Whether it be healthcare or any other industry, different companies have come up with and rely on different uses of social media to meet their brand objectives. After surveying a bunch of different social media programs (including the hundreds found…

Those of you who are regular readers know that I’m a big believer in search optimization. In most cases, it’s the single most powerful way to expose the right people to your brand at the right time. The importance of…

Health care policy discussions in the US are often framed in absolutist terms. In particular, there is a widespread belief among the public that treatment –especially for serious illnesses– should be undertaken without regard to cost. Many are wary about…

[Resolutions #1 and #2 were posted earlier this week. Be sure to check them out: "2010 Resolution #1: Stop Talking About Social Media" "2010 Resolution #2: Become an Expert in Just One Thing Digital"]

Today’s resolution is pretty simple once again,…

The hospital discharge process is a rocky one. Such “transitions of care” are fraught with challenges as patients move from a highly supervised to less supervised settings, caregivers change, and information about the patient and their needs is transmitted. These…

I once believed that pharmaceutical research (part of R&D) was the “bright” side of the pharmaceutical industry and that marketing was the “dark” side (see “God Bless R&D, but Marketers May Go to Hell!”).

Then, as so often happens, some pharmaceutical…