Weekend reading: What your doctor should tell you, new stages of grief

Feb 15 2013

Every week Ankita Rao selects interesting reading from around the Web.

The Atlantic: Keeping Patients Out Of Hospitals: A Private-Sector Approach To Health Reform
Dr. Jim Dougher climbs into his white SUV, plugs the address of his next patient into the GPS, and he's off. The SUV is well stocked: He has a large Tupperware bin in the back full of bandages and wound cleaning supplies; he has a variation on the old-time doctor's bag with a stethoscope and blood-pressure cuff; and he has a dedicated cellular wifi hotspot and a laptop that can communicate with HealthCare Partner's electronic medical record…This payment system creates a remarkable alignment of interests: It is irrelevant that Dougher's home-visit unit would lose massive amounts of money in a traditional fee-for-service system (Adam Wolfberg, 2/13).

Mother Jones: 5 Things Your Doctor Should Tell You, But Won't
As a lifelong hypochondriac, I've always been comforted by the Hippocratic oath. What an excellent idea, having doctors pledge to put patients first. So I was less than thrilled to learn that doctors are under increasing pressure-;from state legislatures, industry, and other groups-;to break that oath by withholding key pieces of information from their patients. "We are very concerned about special interests attempting to influence our practices," says Valerie Arkoosh, president of the National Physicians Alliance (NPA). "We've seen state legislatures overreaching a lot with regard to doctor-patient relationship." Here are five things that-;depending on where you live-;your doctor could be keeping from you (Kiera Butler, 2/11).

Slate: The Five Stages Of Grief Should Be Changed
When Elisabeth Kübler-Ross debuted the five stages of grief in her book On Death and Dying, published in 1969, they were intended for people facing their own deaths. Kübler-Ross later went on to apply these same five stages to the bereaved, to people who had lost a loved one, but upon closer inspection, I'm not sure they work as well. Losing a loved one is not the same as losing your life. Grief thrusts us into an uncertain world where anxiety often reigns supreme. Yet anxiety is the very element missing from Kübler-Ross' stages (Claire Bidwell Smith, 2/11).