Andre Heinemann MD

Surrounded by pixels: You Learn, Jorge Luis Borges

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 10:00:08 -0500

Surrounded by pixels: You Learn, Jorge Luis Borges:

After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,

And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
And presents aren’t promises,

And you begin to accept your defeats
…

jayparkinsonmd: As a doctor, starting your own practice can be...

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 19:57:38 -0400

jayparkinsonmd:

As a doctor, starting your own practice can be challenging. The biggest issue here is what do you do on the first day you hang your shingle? It’s not like you’re busy seeing 20 patients. And if you’re not busy, you’re not making money. A practice has to grow gradually and organically over time. Also, opening a traditional practice is expensive. But what if you opened your practice and you were busy the first day? Well, that’s what we’d like to facilitate.

Sherpaa is growing like crazy. And that’s a wonderful thing. This means we’re getting calls on a regular basis from our clients and we’re either solving the issue over email or the phone or referring them to our favorite specialists. But the point is, we’d love to partner with a really wonderful doctor here in NYC who wants to set up a house call (or rather, an office call) practice to see our clients. When anyone has a health issue, you’d visit their office and treat them. It’s super convenient for them. And super fun and fulfilling for you.

Here’s the kicker. This would be almost exactly like the house call practice I set up as my first practice. The overhead would be next to nothing. I started my practice with $1500 and my overhead was less than 10%. And, right from the start, you’d have immediate business because we’d serve as your referral source to take care of our people. We’d all win. You, Sherpaa, and Sherpaa’s lovely people we cover.

Anyway, just a thought. But I think it would be wonderful. Shoot me an email if you’re interested.

photo source

Anonymous: Hello Democracy, Goodbye ACTA

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 15:23:41 -0400

Anonymous: Hello Democracy, Goodbye ACTA:

anoncentral:

AFP Photo/Frederick Florin

Image from Twitter/@judithineuropa

AFP Photo/Frederick Florin

The European Parliament has rejected ACTA, a controversial trade agreement, which was widely criticized over its likely assault on internet freedoms.

Supporters of the…

jayparkinsonmd: What really happens to our muscles as we age if...

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:54:42 -0500

jayparkinsonmd:

What really happens to our muscles as we age if we are chronically active?

These are MRI cross sections of leg muscles. Via this recently published study in the journal Physician and Sports Medicine. See also.

Visual Radiation Dose Graphic

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 12:29:09 -0500

Visual Radiation Dose Graphic:

How does 1mSv (1 milli Sievert) visually compare to your last LA to JFK flight?

2012

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 13:44:00 -0500

I wish all of you a happy, healthy and prosperous 2012.

The nation's "best" hospitals aren't even in the top 400 list of safest hospitals.

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:12:04 -0400

The nation's "best" hospitals aren't even in the top 400 list of safest hospitals.:

Thank you, great post - difference between perception and evidence :-) Evidence rules!

jayparkinsonmd:

In the latest advance for health care accountability, the country’s leading hospital accreditation board, the Joint Commission, released a list on Tuesday of 405 medical centers that have been the most diligent in following protocols to treat conditions like heart attack and pneumonia. Almost without exception, most highly regarded hospitals in the United States, from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., did not make the list.

The Joint Commission list omitted the Cleveland Clinic; Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston; Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.; Ronald Reagan U.C.L.A. Medical Center; and the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, among others. It did not include a single hospital in New York City, or the most prominent centers in Chicago and Houston.

The safest and most effective hospitals aren’t always what you think. Many of the nation’s “top” hospitals think their reputation allows them to do whatever they want, when, in the end, the evidence now suggests you’ll get higher quality, safer care at your local no-name hospital.

jayparkinsonmd: theatlanticvideo: ‘Always a Family’ Remembers...

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 22:59:20 -0400

jayparkinsonmd:

theatlanticvideo:

‘Always a Family’ Remembers a Father’s Last Phone Call on 9/11

StoryCorps records true stories as told by real people and then brings them to life with animation. ‘Always a Family’ is the heartbreaking story of a father who called his family on the morning of September 11 from the 103rd floor of the North Tower to say goodbye.

This one is completely heartbreaking — you’ll probably need a hug after you watch it.

StoryCorps is one of my favorite things on the internet, in addition to David Lynch’s Interview Project. But this story is heartbreaking. If you knew the person you loved only had a short time left on this earth, but things fell apart, what would you do to fix your relationship with him or her? I guess the truth is that we all just have such a short time in this world, and our relationships are all we have. You’ve got to throw everything you can into them, because, it’s situations like this that give us all a bit of perspective. Get over some differences. Focus on the good in each other. Know that the vast majority of problems you have in this relationship will very likely resurface in future relationships. And just get on with living life to it’s fullest. Life’s too short not to work things out.

Drugs and the meaning of life

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 15:32:56 -0400

Drugs and the meaning of life:

What’s your opinion about using mind altering substances and the taboo about it? Sam Harris has written a great and educational article to start a conversation!

Atlantis launched one final time

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 12:11:07 -0400

The Space Shuttle launched from KSC, one final time, a beautiful spectacle live on NASA TV in HD, 4.5 Million pounds of hardware and humans ascending into the sky on their way to the International Space Station. Unfortunately the weather in St. Petersburg didn’t allow me to watch the launch live in the sky.

After 135 launches, many of which I watched live and in person, I admit I am getting a little sentimental. What is most amazing is the feeling I get from events like these, enthusiasm crossing race, gender, religion, political orientation, for a few minutes all minds focused on just one thing.

The solutions to our healthcare problems are probably simpler...

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 09:37:00 -0400

The solutions to our healthcare problems are probably simpler than they appear. We could start by completely eliminating health insurance companies as they don’t add value to healthcare only cost. Next tackle the pharmaceutical and medical equipment manufacturers and stop the price gouging they are engaged in. Patients and doctors alike need to have reasonable expectations about costs and income, just as they need to have a more reasonable approach to medical malpractice.

Most people reading this probably think I live in utopia, and I might just do. However, when you look past all the bullshit, profiteering and lobbying you might just discover that I am not that far off. Whenever something appears really complicated there might be a good reason for it.

The biggest problem will be that the same people who profit from the status quo are the people who could change all of this. Real change will come from the ground up, it starts with you and me, educating ourselves and others, looking at healthcare as a business like every other, demanding proper real-life answers, and most of all, starting to say NO.

jayparkinsonmd:

I’m in Lucerne, Switzerland speaking at a conference today. This place is stunning.

Also interesting to note the challenges that the Swiss have in healthcare. They have a somewhat similar situation as the US:

they’ve been mandated to purchase private insurance since 1996

premiums have risen over 80% since then (our premiums double every 7 and a half years)

they’re getting increasingly angry about the high cost of health insurance, especially since the health insurance companies are seen as highly profitable

Switzerland has only about 8 million people but over 80 different private health insurance companies. And most everything here in Switzerland’s healthcare system is done on paper, no computers. It’s fascinating to see that everywhere, all over the world, healthcare is simply backwards. Nobody has gotten it right. I used to think that we can produce some fancy new technology using the internet to disrupt healthcare and make it more friendly and efficient, but it’s quite clear that a technological solution to a political problem will fail 99.9% of the time.

Documentary on Early U.S. Radiation Experiments on Black Children

Sat, 28 May 2011 09:01:00 -0400

Documentary on Early U.S. Radiation Experiments on Black Children

jayparkinsonmd: Colchine has been used to treat gout for...

Thu, 26 May 2011 10:37:37 -0400

jayparkinsonmd:

Colchine has been used to treat gout for decades. Gout is a relatively common painful kind of arthritis. Colchicine has been around so long that nobody had ever bothered to patent it. It was a few pennies a pill and very effective. In steps URL Pharmaceuticals. They realized it didn’t have a patent so they quickly did some studies to determine its effectiveness. Of course the studies showed that it was safe and effective. They took their studies to the FDA who quickly approved “their” colchicine. URL then had exclusive rights to sell colchicine as a branded drug at over $5 a pill. And then they successfully sued the companies who had been making colchicine as a generic for years. They’ve won the cases. And now people who depended on colchicine for their daily lives must pay $5 a pill instead of 5 cents.

Now a few members of Congress want answers.

Too late. What URL Pharmaceuticals did was just business right? That’s the American medical industry…

illustration by James Gillray

Dr. J. Marion Sims Medical Experiments on Enslaved Women and Children

Thu, 26 May 2011 10:32:37 -0400

Dr. J. Marion Sims Medical Experiments on Enslaved Women and Children

What would we need to do, as citizens, the group the healthcare...

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 10:38:17 -0400

What would we need to do, as citizens, the group the healthcare system is supposed to serve and also the group financing the entire thing, to start speaking with one, very loud, voice?

azspot:

A Very Different Health-Care Debate

One of the best-designed systems in the country gets better

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 08:51:06 -0400

One of the best-designed systems in the country gets better:

My sentiments exactly!

jayparkinsonmd:

healthpolitics:

For the fifth straight year, the US highway system set a record low number of traffic fatalities. Through the ultimate combination of built environment, carefully-calibrated enforcement levels and incentives, and extensive buy-in from auto manufacturers, a large number of moving pieces with different agendas have come together to keep people safe in ways that most drivers don’t even think about.

This is the model health care should follow. Stakeholders are allowed far too much leeway to run rampant in pursuit of their own interests because there are so few people at the top who understand how everything works and can articulate a cohesive system with any kind of authority.

This, of course, is excellent news.

But if roads, like sickness, were privately held cash cows owned by 900,000 independent businesspeople, I guarantee the people at the top would be just as powerless. Medical treatment happens privately, behind closed doors, with very, very little proven standards— regulating 300 million people’s treatment and diagnosis is much more difficult than installing roadside barriers to prevent collisions with streetlights. Even those at the top have no idea, nor any precedent, about how to make profit-driven sickcare affordable and safe.

If auto-manufacturers didn’t get on board a few years ago with the fact that families don’t want to die in 65mph steel death traps anymore, cars would be much, much less safe (thank you Nader).

Contact with the American Healthcare System is about three times as deadly as our highway system. I wish doctors and hospitals would actually start caring about their safety record and then marketing to their customers bragging about how safe they are, just as Volvo did back in the 80’s, twenty years ahead of any of the other auto makers.

How will Google's Farmer Update impact you and your business?

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:53:12 -0400

Google governs the Internet. Everybody involved in online business, online marketing and search engine optimization will know what I am talking about. I have been wondering about Google and SEO for quite sometime. I can’t say I like what I see for various reason, but here are the main ones:

Google dominates the search market and has gotten way too powerful in this domain; it basically governs the Internet as we know it (except for those of us who believe Facebook is the Internet)
Adwords has gotten way too costly for the average business owner to benefit from, squeezing out young, small and medium sized business that don’t have a multi-million dollar advertising budgets.
Because of Google’s importance to website owners (PR etc.), most webmasters will optimize their site to rank favorably. Taken to the extreme, this means adding text not intended to be read by humans - the most polite way to say this I could come up with ;-)

Today Google decides what is good content and what you are really searching for when you are typing into it’s search box. Supposedly there is no human intervention. Does this then mean that an algorithm can more accurately decide a) what is useful to me? and b) what I am really thinking? I beg to differ.

I am also wondering who benefits the most from these changes? IMHO that would be Google. While they might temporarily improve search results until people figure out how to circumvent the latest algorithm changes, they force business owners to invest more money into Adwords, in other words Google’s koffers, if they want their businesses to appear on the first page of search results… With attention spans decreasing what good does it really do to be listed on page 37or on page 7 for that matter?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Techneur: You Need an Emergency Fund

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 08:58:21 -0400

Techneur: You Need an Emergency Fund:

Everybody does, even if you are independently wealthy, but then you already have one ;-)

techneur:

What is an Emergency Fund?

An Emergency Fund is an account that should contain money in the event of an emergency or life change. Most financial writers advise people to have six months to twelve months of expenses in the fund.

Why?

Shit happens. You need money to cover it.

Most…

Techneur: Timely Correspondence

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 09:50:22 -0500

Techneur: Timely Correspondence:

techneur:

When a friend contacts you, how long do you take to respond? How about your wife, client, or boss? The longer you take, the more it shows to that other person that they aren’t valued to you.

We live in a world where instant responses are expected.

I think these are good response times:

…

jayparkinsonmd: wildfood: Brussels sprouts! One of my side...

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 12:17:35 -0500

jayparkinsonmd:

wildfood:

Brussels sprouts!

One of my side projects on tumblr— Wild Food!

Rarely do you know what the food you’re eating actually looks like growing in the wild or on a farm. Now you do!

Wild Food! is a collection of some great photos of growing food I’ve stumbled across on the internet. If y’all want to submit photos of food growing on farms or out in the wild, fire away!