[EurekaAlert] A growing number of hospitalized adults are incapable of making their own health decisions, but little research has explored how doctors feel about making medical decisions with a patient’s surrogate decision maker.
A study published in the September 2009 issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine found that one in five doctors are not [...]

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Visiting the Cleveland Clinic this week,President Obama held up that well-known hospital as a model for the rest of the country. But for most of the nation’s nearly 6,000hospitals, copying the Cleveland Clinic would be like asking the Durham Bulls, a minor league team, to copy the New York Yankees.

Articles in this series are analyzing [...]

[NPR] In a widely watched case in Florida this week, a jury ruled that a hospital acted “reasonably” when it sent an undocumented immigrant who had no health insurance back to his native Guatemala. The case highlights a rare but growing problem, and it could affect how hospitals treat such patients in the future.
The case [...]

[Monterey Herald] At 82, retired engineer Leonard Thompson is out to show he still has a few good years left. Years? What’s this bunk about mere years, sonny? More like decades. Why the heck not?
Thompson, after all, exercises body and mind daily, even developing his own workout program for seniors that emphasizes stretching, deep breathing, [...]

The below BBC article highlights the increasingly prominent and beneficial role of the hospital ethicist, albeit for interesting reasons. It focuses more on how ethics improves the bottom line and prevents lawsuits than on how it improves the quality of care.  There is no specific mention that ethics and quality care are inseparable, but there is a connection [...]

Newswise — Nearly one in 10 obstetricians in a new study has considered giving up obstetric practice because of the emotional toll of stillbirths and infant deaths.
Three-quarters of the 804 obstetricians who responded to a survey by researchers at the University of Michigan Health System reported that the experience took a large emotional toll on [...]

The University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics’ published a study on “Clinical Ethicists’ Perspectives on Organizational Ethics in Healthcare Organizations” highlighting four major organizational issues of concern:

Resource allocation
Moral distress and organizational moral climate
Conflicts of interest 
Clinical issues with a significant organizational dimension 

The study concluded that “the extent to which ‘clinical ethics’ cases were embedded with an organizational [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]