Concierge Medicine Gets Some Local Attention

Yesterday's L.A. Daily News business section featured an interesting story about concierge medicine.  I was delighted to be one of the physicians interviewed for the story.  I'm grateful to Barbara Correa for shining some light on a practice model that has received very little attention -- a model that I'm convinced is better for patients, better for doctors, and better for the healthcare system.  I'm also grateful to my ...
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Thank You for Scheduling Your Heart Attack on Wednesday

This week's New England Journal of Medicine has an interesting study about how differently emergencies are handled outside of normal working hours.  The study looked at every patient in New Jersey hospitalized with his or her first heart attack between the years of 1987 and 2002.  The authors separated the patients into two groups: those who were admitted on a Saturday or Sunday, and those admitted on a w...
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Women on Atkins Diet Lost More Weight than on Other Diets

Losing weight is the second hardest thing I ask my patients to do.  (Quitting smoking is the hardest.)  Typically, physicians have generally recommended a low-fat diet which is still the diet recommended by national guidelines.  Despite this, several different kinds of diets have become popular recently with varying amounts of carbohydrates, most notably the Atkins diet which is very low in carbohydrates and very high in fat. This week's Journal of the American Medical Association cont...
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Garlic Doesn’t Lower Cholesterol

Garlic is frequently touted as a natural treatment for high cholesterol, and many garlic extracts are sold with the suggestion that they improve cholesterol levels.  The current issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine has an article reporting the most definitive study yet looking at the effects of garlic on cholesterol.  Volunteers were randomized into four groups:  raw garlic, powdered garlic suppl...
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