Back when death panels were a regular part of the news cycle, the image was conjured of faceless committees that impersonally and unemotionally determined individuals’ fates. ‘Death Panel’ Discussions in a Primary Care Setting, the latest webinar offered in the Arizona Bioethics Network’s EthicsTalk series, promises a more realistic take on April 26 at 7:30am. [...]

Arizona’s ongoing physician shortage is at its heart a classic supply and demand problem. Demand is a moving target, dramatically altered by state budget cuts and slated for a significant shift when additional provisions of the Affordable Care Act take effect in 2014. The supply side, meanwhile, isn’t prepared or resourced to respond effectively. Whatever [...]

The Arizona Bioethics Network’s second annual, nearly sold-out conference will take place April 20 starting at 8am. Ethics at the Bedside – Making the Hard Decisions is a day-long format of presentations and discussion that will build understanding and skills for daily ethical decision-making. About two dozen spots remain for this event, so register today.

Americans generally still view free, efficient markets as foundational to the U.S. economy, but not all markets are as transparent and navigable as they ought to be. Take health insurance. A market that started out atypically – someone else (employers) bought and paid for the product that consumers used – has become more difficult to [...]

If you haven’t already run into it, Collective Impact is the current belle of the nonprofit collaboration ball. It has been hailed by numerous groups – SLHI included – as a model worthy of our attention, and successful case studies on the approach are accumulating. Indulge for a moment in translation of its five conditions [...]

Cholesterol-lowering statin drugs can really be a pain – literally. Exercise studies on both animal and human subjects are finding that statin users experience both greater muscle damage and inhibited muscle recovery due to down-regulation of the body’s natural recovery and rebuilding process. There’s something rotten in Denmark if one’s ability to personally improve heart [...]

…then everything looks like a nail. When you’ve got a gun, the effect is eerily similar. Maslow’s oft-quoted phrase is now being echoed by a University of Notre Dame study revealing that people carrying a weapon are more likely to “classify objects in a scene as a gun and, as a result, to engage in [...]

Whether you ride a bike or not, it turns out that we’re all cyclists. Self-fueling, self-fulfilling prophecies are a long-standing tradition in human history, but lately we’ve developed new cycling skills. Witness the media coverage cycle, where topics are washed, rinsed and hung out to dry. Consider election cycles, driven by legions of paid consultants [...]

A year ago this month, tornadoes and taxes drove us to the brink. According to year-long Gallup polling, the April 27 tornado outbreak claiming 300 lives was 2011′s most stressful day, with April 18′s tax day right behind it. Rounding out the top six and tied with Form 1040 were the Fukishima nuclear plant meltdown, [...]

The phrase “simple decision” should be an oxymoron. Decisions are the products of innumerable recognized and unrecognized influences. Judgments of medical professionals are no exception, which begs a number of questions. When a provider adds scanning equipment on-site does the office begin self-referring more scans? When physicians buy into a for-profit specialty hospital, do they [...]