Rush to Judgement

Conservative radio show host Rush Limbaugh recently launched an attack on Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke. She had testified to house Democrats in support of mandates to provide contraceptive care in insurance plans. On his show two days later, Rush Limbaugh said that Ms. Fluke  was asking for taxpayers to pay her to have sex, and that made her a, “prostitute”.

Others have chimed in that contraception is a lifestyle choice and society shouldn’t have to pay for it.  Whether or not you believe women have the right to get an abortion, it’s a flawed argument. By the same reasoning, insurance shouldn’t cover heart attacks, strokes or cancer if the person smoked or was obese. It’s one thing to incentive healthy behavior, but Rush Limbaugh’s attack is either not well thought out in regards to its health care implications, it’s misogynistic, or it’s politically motivated.

ifttt Medical Applications

I’ve started using the new web service ifttt. It stands for If This Then That. It allows one to use the internet to create various tasks in a If This Than That structure. The This part is what they call a Trigger. It’s the event that has to happen to trigger the task. Triggers can be such things as every time you add a video to your YouTube favorites or every time a photo is tagged with your name in Facebook.

If a task is triggered, then an Action is done. For example every time you add that YouTube favorite, an email is sent to your friend saying you found another YouTube gem, or you get a text message to your phone when you get a photo tagged in Facebook.

These Triggers and Actions come from what they call Channels. This includes such things as Facebook, Twitter, email, and phone calls. They currently have 41 Channels, and growing. This gives enormous possibilities.

Finally one can share created Tasks, in what they call Recipes, that others can download.

I created some recipes with medical tasks in mind. I wrote reminders to take one’s medications. This can be done with a text message or phone call. You could use it for yourself, or set up an account for a friend or family member that needs help remembering to take their pills. You can find the recipes at: http://ifttt.com/people/ginsberg.

Limiting Medication, But Not Really

Once again, CVS Caremark wasted my time. On 1/27/12 they sent me a copy of a letter they sent my patient saying they only provided a limited supply of tramadol to my patient because it’s subject to plan quantity limits. The directions I wrote said that she could take up to 8 pills per day. I only wrote for 60 pills, though, so I didn’t understand why the letter.

It took me about 10 minutes, but a customer representative said I could have ordered 240 pills at a time and it should have gone through. He didn’t know why the letter went out. I pointed out that besides the fact that his company wasted paper and postage mailing out the letters, it probably caused my patient to be concerned, and it wasted my time. He apologized and said the coverage should not be a problem. I said that surely this wasn’t the only mistaken letter they’ve sent out and said he should pass this on to his supervisor.

Mistakes happen, but the answer should not be, as Gilda Radner said, “Never mind!” Instead organizations should apologize and try to figure out why it happened, and what can be done to prevent it from happening in the future. When a pharmacy benefit manager, such as CVS Caremark, does otherwise, the message is they don’t care if they waste doctor’s time.

Acid Revelations – Acid Reducers and Asthma in Children

The Journal of the Medical Association recently published an article about the use of lansoprazole (Prevacid) for children with poorly controlled asthma. It had been thought that gastoesophageal reflux disease (GERD) contributed to asthma exacerbations because acid would come up from the stomach and get into the lungs.

By putting tubes down the nose and into the stomach and esophagus it was known that children often have reflux when they have breathing problems, even without having heartburn symptoms. Proton pump inhibitors (PPI’s) such as lansoprazole, omeprazole (Prilosec), pantoprazole (Protonix) and others, markedly decrease the amount of acid produced in the stomach. Even if the contents reflux into the esophagus (think of an old fashioned coffee percolator), there would be less irritation if it was less acidic.

In adults with asthma and reflux symptoms, studies have shown the PPI’s help their lung function. Despite lack of conclusive studies showing benefits in children, its use in them markedly increased between 2000 and 2005. It made intuitive sense and the medications seemed pretty safe.

In this study children with poorly controlled asthma without gastroesophageal reflux (GER) symptoms not only did not do better with lansoprazole, they had more adverse events with increased respiratory infections. There were also six times as many activity related fractures in those on the medication. Although it didn’t quite reach statistical significance because of the relatively small numbers, the PPI’s are known to be associated with osteoporosis in adults.

This illustrates the important difference in statistics between association and causation. Just because two things occur together, doesn’t meant that one causes the other, and even so, it doesn’t mean treating one will treat the other. There is an old joke of a man walking around carrying an umbrella on a sunny day. “Why are you carrying an umbrella when it’s not raining,” asked his friend. “To keep the tigers away,” he replied. “But there are no tigers around here,” his friend objected. “See, it works,” he answered.

The accompanying JAMA editorial called the use of proton pump inhibitors for asthma a case of, “therapeutic creep.” That’s using medications beyond what the scientific evidence shows. This is not necessarily wrong. For example I commonly recommend vitamin D for my patients even though we still don’t have definitive evidence. In such cases, though, it’s good to remember the limits of what we know and beware of potential risks. As Hippocrates reportedly first said, Primum non nocere – First do no harm.

Even my dog’s veterinarian suggested using using over-the-counter Zantac or Pepcid for reflux because my dog sometimes threw up on the rug. Now I don’t feel so bad that I ignored her advice.

Prior Prior Authorization

I prescribed Chantix for one of my patients recently. CVS Caremark faxed us a, “CLINICAL PRIOR AUTHORIZATION CRITERIA REQUEST FORM”. It said to complete the form then fax it to them. Once received they would fax a, “DRUG SPECIFIC CRITERIA FORM”.

Why couldn’t they just have sent the specific criteria form in the first place? It didn’t take long to fill out the first form, but why should I have to sign my name twice for one medication for one patient? In addition someone had to take the time to sort through the office faxes and then get it to me, and my nurse had to fax it back, then had to send the fax confirmation to shredding, not to mention that we are paying for the paper, ink and electricity for these faxes.

Chantix only has one use, to help people stop smoking. Why should there be any criteria for coverage? Either cover it or don’t. Maybe they want to know if the patient tried generic bupropion first (actually they subsequently asked if they were taking it at the same time). Well they could have checked their records and seen that the patient was prescribed it in the past and conclude that it didn’t work. They asked if the patient would be monitored for depression. Sure, that is a reported side effect of the medication. But it’s not like CVS Caremark is asking if I know the side effect of all the medications I prescribe.

Pharmacy Benefit Managers like CVS Caremark should stop over burdening physicians with needless paperwork.

Audacious Align Avarice

Align is a probiotic manufactured by Proctor & Gamble. It’s a little pricy, but I often recommend it to patients with diarrhea or abdominal cramps. They’ve supplied me with $5.00 coupons to give to my patients.

Imagine my surprise to find the 2012 coupons are $4.50. Give me a break!

According to their web site, boxes of Align now have over $50 worth of coupons for their other products, as shown below. I guess that’s why they had to knock 50 cents off the price.

$10.00 off ONE
42 ct. Prilosec OTC®

$4.00 off ONE
Metamucil® Product

$5.00 off ONE
Olay® Professional Pro-X Product

$1.00 off ONE
Head & Shoulders Product

$7.00 off ONE
Crest® 3D Whitestrips Professional Effects

$10.00 off ONE
Braun Electric Shaver or Epilator (excluding MobileShave)

$1.00 off ONE
Bounty® 6-roll ct. Towels or Larger OR Two — Towels or Napkins ANY SIZE

$5.00 off ONE
PUR® Pitcher or Faucet Mount System

$1.00 off ONE
Charmin® Freshmates® Product

$1.00 off ONE
Oral-B® Pulsar, CrossAction, Advantage, or TWO Indicator or Cavity Defense

$1.00 off ONE
Charmin® Product

Buy ONE
Gillette® Deodorant, Get ONE Gillette Body Wash (Up to $4.29)

Surprising HIPAA Violation

The Health Information Portability Act (HIPAA) has criteria about not violating patient privacy, and potential harsh penalties for doing so. One needs to not only avoid saying a patient’s name to the public (meaning people not involved in the patient’s care), but not even to provide enough identifying information to allow someone to identify a patient. If you say you saw a 45-year-old male architect for diabetes, and there aren’t that many architects in town, you’ve probably supplied enough information for someone to figure out who you’re talking about.

I’m usually pretty conscious of it, and some of my colleagues are used to me ‘coughing’ “HIPAA” when they say a patient’s name aloud. One day, however, while eating lunch with my colleagues, I told the story of an 80+ man who came in complaining of a large bruise on his leg that he sustained after a fall when he tripped while running backwards. One of my colleagues said, “Was that Bob Smith*?”

“How did you know?” I asked.

“We go on the ski bus together and after he gets off he always runs backwards around the bus!”

*Not his real name, and yes, I got his permission to post this story.

Practicing Medicine Without a License

Not infrequently, patients question me about a medication because they’ve heard it’s unsafe. Often it’s from lawyers advertising the dangers of a particular medication or medical product. Although on occasion this may be a good service, most of the time it’s not.

All medications have both benefits and risks, and just because there is a potential problem, doesn’t mean it’s not worth the risk, and it doesn’t mean that alternatives are any safer.

Lately I’ve had patient’s refuse to take Actos for fear of bladder cancer. I don’t see lawyers advertizing about sulfonylureas, probably because they are generic, but they are more likely to cause hypoglycemia, which is much more common than bladder cancer, and may be more serious.

Maybe we need lawyers to go after the lawyers. “Did you suffer any problems after stopping a medicine because you read that it’s dangerous?” Sure, they’ll claim first amendment rights, but maybe they could charge them with practicing medicine without a license.

Epic Customizations

Epic is the electronic medical record (EMR) I use at work (actually my company calls it MultiCare Connect). There are a number of customizations one can do to increase efficiency, and I’ve done a lot. Keep reading to learn just how much.

There are SmartPhrases. These are shortcuts to write out text. Instead of writing “past medical history” one can write “.pmh” and it will automatically enter the three words. A SmartPhrase can contain other SmartPhrases enabling one to generate the shell of a note with a few key strokes, then just fill in the portions that cannot be automatically added.

There are SmartLists. This allows one to basically use a drop down box to select one or more options. Although I have 55 of them, each one consists of multiple entries. For example, if I want to enter the specialists a patient sees, I may select the cardiology and gastroenterology SmartLists, then select the physician the patient sees from each list.

There are a number of different Preference Lists. This is typically used to order various things and save them in the way you want, to save time later. In my Medication Preference List, for example, for an antibiotic it may say to take the medication twice a day until finished and include the proper amount of pills. In the description I write that it’s an antibiotic so my patients know what the medicine is for, and to lessen the chances the pharmacist may misread it. I also include an end date so the medication won’t show up on the patient’s medication list after they have finished taking them. It’s a bit of work, but once saved, it’s very quick to use in the future.

SmartText is kind of a SmartPhrase tied to certain situations. I’ve probably written more than one, but there is no easy way for me to look up which ones I’ve created.

SmartSets allows one to set up templates to do such things as place multiple orders and associate them with diagnoses and notes, and basically speed up various paperwork we have to do. Unfortunately a few years ago Epic made it much more difficult to write or edit SmartSets, so I’ve pretty much stopped working on them.

Letter Templates are just like they sound. I have one to tell women their PAP smear was normal, one to ask their employer to excuse them from work, one asking for a patient to be excused from jury duty due to their medical condition, etc. Unfortunately, as with the SmartSets, it’s no longer easy to write new ones or modify my existing ones.

For the medication dictionary, not only can I add words, but I can set it to auto correct words. If I type “referal”, for example, it will automatically change it to “referral”.

I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking to dictate parts of my notes, but I go beyond with custom scripts. For example, if I say, “order anemia panel” it will enter the proper codes for a CBC, iron/TIBC, ferritin and vitamin B12.

I’m constantly updating, but as of last week, these are the customizations I’ve done in each category.

Tool Number
SmartPhrase 1203
SmartText 1
SmartSet 28
Letter Template 16
Dictionary 5861
Preference Lists
Charges 4
EKG 3
Office Visits 1
Education 3
Immunizations/Injections 13
Labs 335
Imaging 170
Medications 3594
Orders 3
Procedures 41
Referrals 278
Supplies 2
Dragon Scripts 302
Total 11914

Each of the 11,914 items is a customization. It may be as simple as a word added to the dictionary, or represents paragraphs of text, a list of hundreds of items, or dozens of lines of computer code. Having been on Epic since 1998, that means I’ve averaged about a 1000 customizations a year.

All these customizations makes Epic very powerful, but unfortunately it was not designed well to share. Many of the items, such as Preference Lists, can be shared, but only by individuals importing someone’s list. If someone imports my Medication Preference List, it goes out of date as soon as I make a change. My list is so long it may take 5 minutes or so to import the list, and even if faster, most people are not going to remember to import the list regularly. It’s like backing up one’s computer. If not set to do so automatically, most people won’t do it. In addition when one imports someone’s list, it doesn’t show where it came from. I think it would be far better if people could subscribe to preference lists similarly to how one follows people on Facebook or Twitter. My medication preference list was designed for internists seeing adult patients. A family practitioner should be able to subscribe my list, to use on their adult patients, and another list to cover their pediatric patients. It is difficult to share customizations within my own company, and far harder still to share with people in other medical groups. Consequently thousands of people have to reinvent the Epic wheel.

Viewing Doctor’s Notes

Should patients be allowed to see doctor’s notes? Legally they can, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea. Patients would like to, but physicians are not so sure. People make strong arguments, but I think it’s really nuanced.

Physicians often write down the differential diagnoses. Say you’ve lost a little weight without trying. It could be a lot of things such as stress, cancer, an overactive thyroid, an ulcer, HIV AIDS, tuberculosis or a thousand other things. After asking a number of questions and doing an exam, I may decide that it’s unlikely that there’s any serious medical problem going on and prescribe a medication for depression. When I see you back in a month I’ll order additional tests if you have not responded as expected, and particularly if you’re still losing weight. But in my first note, I would have likely at least mentioned some of the diagnostic possibilities, and probably using medical terminology such as malignancy. I write these for a number of reasons. Mostly it makes for good care. Just in case it turns out to not be depression, when I look back at my prior note it will remind me of some of the concerns I had. It also provides a road map of what I was thinking if the patient has to see another physician, whether it’s because I’m on vacation, they have to go to the emergency room or see another physician. The note is also necessary due to malpractice concerns. Doctors are usually not expected to know the future, but the legal assumption is that if you didn’t write it down, it didn’t happen. If you don’t show that you considered the possibility of a serious condition, the presumption is it didn’t cross your mind.

Psychiatrists are allowed to protect their notes. Is that because their patients are too unstable to see their notes? Is it because the psychiatrist needs to record things that a patient may misinterpret? During the course of treatment they might have some insight about a patient’s problems, but not know whether their guess is right. By recording their thoughts they can later go back and review them, improve their diagnosis and treatment, and better help the patient. Well the majority of psychiatric care in the United States is actually provided by primary care physicians. There are not enough psychiatrists to treat all the cases of depression and anxiety. But primary care physicians notes are not similarly protected.

One measure of the benefit of a treatment is the number needed to treat. For example, one may need to treat 20 patients with a cholesterol medication for a year for every heart attack prevented. Conversely is the number needed to harm. Depending on age, it’s estimated that for about every 1500 abdominal CT scans, one person will get cancer as a result of the radiation. A good clinician will be correct the majority of time. How many patients will be harmed by reading chart notes (needless worry, additional tests that have their own risks and costs ordered because of that fear, physicians not recording important information for fear of it being read by a patient) for every patient that benefits?

I’m not embarrassed by what I write in a patient’s chart, but patients might be if they read it. Imagine a man asks a family member to review his medical records to see if they think he has been getting good care, given his recent heart attack. He probably forgot that a few years ago he spoke with me about sexual problems he was having.

The system I suggest would be a juried one. Patients could request their records, and in most cases the physicians would grant access to most or all of the record. If there was parts they did not want to show, they could explain why to the patient. If the patient did not accept the answer, they could appeal to a third party health advocate who would then decide whether it should be released or not. This would only apply to patients who are not bringing legal action. I think this approach would make physicians a little more comfortable, and lead to better patient care.