The Business Journal: “The UCSF School of Pharmacy has launched a new service in Fresno to address the urgent need among Central Valley residents and their health care providers for assistance in managing their prescriptions. The service will start scheduling appointments this week and will officially open for in-person patient consultations on Sept. 1. Through the program, patients will meet one-on-one with an experienced clinical pharmacist to evaluate the prescriptions they currently use, ensure the medications are safe and effective for them, and help them manage their daily drug regimens.” – This is a great service and people should take advantage of it. I’ve reviewed the medication regimens of several members of my own family and you would be shocked to learn what I’ve discovered. My review of family medication regimens have revealed a duplicate therapy, a significant drug interactions, one medication causing side effects that were being treated as a medical condition, a medication being used for the wrong condition and one medication that was never prescribed; it was accidentally added to the patient’s profile by mistake in the pharmacy. I recommend that all pharmacists review the medication regimens for all their family members. If you find something weird, I’d love to hear about it.
Best Hospitals 2009-2010
US News and World Report: “America’s Best Hospitals, an annual ranking of the country’s elite medical centers, is a tool for patients who need medical sophistication most facilities cannot offer. Unlike other rankings and ratings that grade hospitals on how well they execute routine procedures like outpatient hernia repair or manage common conditions like low-grade heart failure, the U.S. News approach looks at how well a hospital handles complex and demanding situations—replacing an 85-year-old man’s heart valve, diagnosing and treating a spinal tumor, and dealing with inflammatory bowel disease, to name three examples. High-stakes medicine…..In 12 of the 16 specialties, those in which quality of care can spell life or death, hospitals were scored on reputation, death rate, patient safety, and care-related factors such as nursing and patient services; the 50 highest scorers were ranked. Scores and complete data for unranked hospitals are available as well. In the other four specialties—ophthalmology, psychiatry, rehabilitation, and rheumatology—hospitals were ranked on reputation alone, because so few patients die that mortality data don’t mean much. Here are a few of the details: Reputation, which counted as 32.5 percent of the score, was based on three years of specialist surveys—a total of almost 10,000 physicians were asked to name five hospitals they consider among the best in their specialty for difficult cases, without taking into account cost or location. A mortality index, also 32.5 percent of the score, indicates a hospital’s ability to keep patients with serious problems alive. Patient safety, new this year, made up 5 percent of the score; it indicates how well a hospital minimizes harm to patients. And a group of other care-related factors, such as nurse staffing and available technology, accounted for the remaining 30 percent.”
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