Doctors

New Website For Oral Surgeons Group: MyOMS.org

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A new website was launched last month by the Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (AAOMS), a U.S. based oral and maxillofacial surgeons group, MyOMS.org. The press release for the website launch is located over at http://myoms.org/assets/uploads/documents/myoms.org_website_news_release.pdf and titled Web site Gives Patients New Insight into Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. It was known several months ago that a new website was coming, see the post Upcoming Changes to JOMS and AAOMS in 2014. The website is described in the press release as easy to navigate and designed to allow the public access to vital information on conditions of the face, mouth, and jaw. The press release also describes how videos and illustrations explain many of the procedures offered. Furthermore, a Find a Surgeon feature allows patients to find oral surgeons near where they live or work. Reviewing the website, the design … Read more

Retractions and Corrections From Scientific Misconduct

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An interesting article appears in the Journal of Medical Ethics, January 2013, vol. 39, pp. 46-50, titled “Scientific retractions and corrections related to misconduct findings,” by David B Resnik and Gregg E Dinse. The authors explored 208 closed cases involving official findings of research misconduct published by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity from 1992 to 2011 in order to determine how often scientists mention in a retraction or correction notice that there was an ethical problem with the article. The issue of fraudulent articles appear in the scientific literature is a problem as many articles and the data within them can be falsified. See for example Industry Bias in Biomedical Science and The Right to Health and Information. The authors mention that typically when a retraction or correction is made to an article they are usually electronically linked to … Read more

Do Physicians Have a Responsibility to Meet the Health Care Needs of Society?

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An interesting article appears in the Fall 2012 issue of the The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics by Allan S. Brett titled “Physicians Have a Responsibility to Meet the Health Care Needs of Society.” Allan opens the article by addressing a question that was posed to Ron Paul in the 2012 presidential election by Wolf Blizter which I mentioned before on this post https://blog.teethremoval.com/dumb-americans-trust-their-doctors-for-no-valid-reason/. Allan aruged that Ron Paul agreed with the sentiment that “physicians have a responsibility to meet the health care needs of society.” In the article Allan makes the following case. “In the rest of this essay, I first demonstrate that society is already organized— at least in part — to rescue sick people regardless of ability to pay, and that society is not prepared to abandon that general guiding principle. It follows that physicians — … Read more

Now is a Great Time to Sell Your Dental Practice: Four Signs of the Industry Season

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Right now, over the next 12 to 18 months, may be the perfect time to sell your dental practice. Even if you are not in the market to retire, you can sell your practice. Many dentists sell their practices so they no longer have worry about owning a business and providing for several staff and their families. Selling a practice can give dentists an opportunity to work as professors or to simply just practice their crafts. Selling a practice often leaves dentists in a comfortable financial situation. With approaching challenges, like Obama-care, many dentists are selling because recent dental school graduates are able to get good lending rates to buy well-established practices. At one dental society meeting, a speaker informed the crowd on the approaching economics and Obama-care programs.  This speaker explained that veteran dentists will not benefit from the … Read more

Controversy Over Spinal Fusion

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Debate over spinal fusion surgery continues to occur. A recent article tiled “Spinal fusions serve as a case study for debate over when certain surgeries are necessary,” appears in the Washington Post written by Peter Whoriskey and Dan Keating and published on October 27, 2013. (Note I have previously mentioned some of the controversy over spinal fusion in the post Tips to Prevent Medical Errors – AHRQ) The article mentions that spinal fusions being performed in the U.S. has risen over the years and that around half of the surgeries they reviewed don’t meet expert consensus on when the surgery should be performed. This article discusses a surgeon at a Florida hospital who was earning well over a million a year performing spinal fusions on patients. Auditors at the hospital began to wonder if all the cases were necessary and … Read more