“Patients are grateful – it is reasonable for hospitals to ask them to help out… but it is impolite and erodes trust for hospitals not to ask specifically if patient information can be shared for fundraising.” said Professor Robert Baker of Union Graduate College and panelist for NYC-based Bioethics International’s United Nations-affiliate conference when interviewed about Hospitals [...]

[May 23, 2008] BEI organizes the United Nations-affiliate 2008 bioethics conference, moderated by Exec. Dir. Jennifer Miller, to address current and emerging global healthcare and ethics concerns. Panelists were selected from BEI’s global network of experts including from Yale University, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Harlem Hospital, NY Presbyterian Hospital, et al. Panels included:

To Have the Best [...]

A decision to forcibly impose chemotherapy on an 11-year-old Hamilton boy who didn’t want to go through another round of painful treatment was “heavy-handed” and “worrisome” considering how often similar conflicts arise, several bioethicists said Monday.The boy, who cannot be named because he is now in the care of the Children’s Aid Society, has been [...]

When a patient tests HIV-positive, a doctor has to navigate state law and medical ethics. It can be a rocky path. My patient, a 26-year-old native of the Dominican Republic, had been seeing me for only a few months when I determined that he had been infected with HIV. He didn’t seem surprised but was [...]

New York City officials plan within months to dispatch the nation’s first ambulance equipped to preserve bodies of the newly dead so that families have time to consider organ donation.
The controversial twist: Crews would swoop in and perform procedures on a corpse without consent in order to preserve the organs until the family had time [...]

Capital Region residents should take steps to ensure that the presidential candidates’ current focus on the economy does not detract from a critically necessary national discussion about health care. The two are inexorably linked.
The connection between a sound American economy and health care was recognized as long ago as 1945, when President Truman observed that [...]

Providing proportionate medical care is crucial – a balance between overtreating and undertreating patients – but I worry that ’slow medicine’ may be linked more with saving money than providing quality patient care, per the below NYT article.
Edie Gieg, 85, strides ahead of people half her age and plays a fast-paced game of tennis. But when [...]

Doctors know some patients needing lifesaving care won’t get it in a flu pandemic or other disaster. The gut-wrenching dilemma will be deciding who to let die. Now, an influential group of physicians has drafted a grimly specific list of recommendations for which patients wouldn’t be treated. They include the very elderly, seriously hurt trauma [...]

When I train doctors to deliver ‘person-centered’ healthcare, concierge practices are not exactly what I had in mind. NBC’s article highlights potential disparities in resource allocation and access resulting from the use of boutique medicine. –
Concierge practice — also known as boutique medicine — is a new a model of medical service emphasizing easy access, [...]