Risk
general, understanding statistics, Why PM
“You’re 100% alive or 100% dead at any given moment”
A recurring training topic on this blog, originally for e-patients but also for clinicians and policy people, is understanding statistics. (See posts in that category.) Not only are statistics often misinterpreted; even when they’re correctly understood, patients too often interpret a slim chance as no chance. During my illness I heard from a long-ago co-worker. [...]
Read Morenews & gossip, reforming hc, Why PM
Healthcare journalists point out difficulty of using Joint Commission’s hospital quality site
Empowered patients know they’re responsible for their choice of care providers. We usually follow our clinicians’ advice, but we take responsibility for it. That’s hard when a quality agency obscures its findings. So I object to a reality reported this week by AHCJ, the Association of Health Care Journalists: Joint Commission site obscures information. Excerpt: (emphasis added)
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Ahem. :-)
I am about to punk my well-known doctor. :–) Me being me, I just had my annual physical. Great visit and all that. Yesterday I got a letter about my lab results. My cholesterol and weight are trending unfavorably, so the good doctor said “you need to take lifestyle changes more seriously to reduce your [...]
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US Health Care Reform: A Contemporary Example of
Goodhart’s Law?
Goodhart’s law – named after a former chief economist of the Bank of England – says that whatever social or economic indicator or other surrogate measure you adopt as a financial target ceases to be a relevant target once you have adopted it because it loses the information content it had originally. What is the [...]
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