jjablkowski's blog

Recently I came across an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association that reviewed the positive and negative effects of publicly reporting outcomes of percutaneous coronary intervention.[1] The reports included the name of the physicians involved in the procedure and the institutions where the procedure was carried out. The review found little evidence that reporting improves quality of care, or that patients actually use the data to decide where or by whom they would wish to have such a procedure performed.

Your 2016 mini-profile is now available to you exclusively online.

The profile provides you with statistics based on the Medical Services Plan (MSP) payments made to you for services provided in the 2016 calendar year, including any settlements or retroactive payments issued as of 31 March 2017. This information allows you to monitor your billings in comparison to your peer group.

One of the most gratifying developments in medical care and in public attitudes is the increasing acceptance of children with developmental disabilities, genetic disorders, and chronic health conditions. Surrounded by caring parents, nonjudgemental siblings, neighbors, supporting friends, and accepting educational institutions the child is likely to receive exemplary care well into adolescent years.

Bessie, my lifelong partner, is in the relentless grip of the four horse riders of dementia: amnesia, agnosia, apraxia, and aphasia. Although the grip of each of these clinical conditions is devastating to her day-to-day functioning, I find that her aphasia makes her life, as it is, and our life as caregivers, particularly difficult. She cannot communicate her needs or likes with language that we can understand, and she does not understand or comprehend our linguistic outreach to her in our caring attempts. 

On 6 October 2017 the Women’s Health Research Institute (WHRI) in Vancouver, located on the BC Women’s Hospital campus, helped to launch an awareness campaign titled #ItsNotInYourHead. This campaign, championed by Dr Lori Brotto, a women’s health researcher, clinician, and executive director of the WHRI, centres on a chronic genital pain condition called provoked vestibulodynia (PVD).