Dr. Kent Bottles is in the midst of a very thoughtful multi-part blog post under the heading, “The Difficult Science Behind Becoming a Savvy Healthcare Consumer.”
Part I examined “the limitations of science in helping us make wise choices and decisions about our health.”
Part II explores “how we all have to change if we are to live wisely in a time of rapid transformation of the American healthcare system that everyone agrees needs to decrease per-capita cost and increase quality.”
Both parts so far have addressed important issues about news media coverage of health care.
The second segment included a nice plug for our HealthNewsReview.org project. It concluded:
Patients, the media, researchers, and clinicians all have to change if we are to live wisely in a time of enormous change and transformation for the American health care system. We must be willing to accept the limitations of science and be open to shared decision making that recognizes that there are trade-offs in any decision made in this uncertain and unpredictable place we call reality.
Bottles promises that Part III (coming soon) will describe how medical schools, payers, and employers need to change.
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
The tale of two “negative” studies. Or, how spin is applied to make research findings look more impressive. A must read. https://johnmandrola.substack.com/p/the-tale-of-two-negative-studies
The @nytimes chose to interview one of the editors of the @AnnalsofIM (publisher of this paper) who "gushed with extraordinary glee: It’s huge! There are very few things that reduce your mortality by 30%."
Turns out coffee is not one of those few things despite all that glee. https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer/status/1533202075928215558
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