View Doctors Behaving Badly in a larger map

The map’s a project of William Heisel, contributing editor to Reporting on Health, a project of the USC Annenberg/California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships program. This year, William started looking at agencies that monitor doctors — to find that “In most states, detailed information about a doctor’s disciplinary, criminal or malpractice histories is either nonexistent or heavily redacted.” (via Shots)

In William’s opinion, part of the problem’s bad website design that makes it difficult for people to find information about doctors — even the worst doctors. He started looking at state medical boards — and their attendant websites — in alphabetical order, citing case examples from each state on Reporting on Health’s blog. So far, he’s gotten to Kansas — which means 17 examples have been blogged about and plotted on the Google map.

In California, the example’s one Dr. Amanda Waugh in Irvine, Calif., who got pulled over, arrested on a DUI charge, booked, and released — then went to work her shift at the La Palma Intercommunity Hospital’s emergency room legally drunk.

But that story’s pretty tame compared to an Arkansas doctor with a love for WMDs or a Delaware pediatrician with a basement dungeon!

William’s now Google-mapped posts are fascinating to read, if rather scary. The journalist says that the medical board in my state of California actually “leads all other agencies in the way it provides information to the public in one easy-to-use and largely complete database” — which led me to try searching the records of all the doctors I’ve seen in the last decade or so. Luckily, none of them had drunk charges or dungeons. How about your doctor?

>> Vaccines and autism aren’t linked — and a 12-year-old paper linking the two was formally retracted by the medical journal the Lancet. Slate republishes an article about why the myth that vaccines can cause autism lives on; NPR has an interview with risk consultant David Ropeik discussing how the risk of vaccines got so overblown.

>> Relatedly, Wired published a great feature piece a few months back: An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All.

>> Can a heroin maintenance program work for addicts? Vancouver’s experiment sounds promising: “88 percent of the heroin maintenance group stayed on their course of treatment, versus 54 percent in the methadone group.” Why this news should be interesting to non heroin addicts: “An untreated heroin addict costs the state $45,000 a year in legal and medical bills; heroin maintenance costs $7,000.”

Questions remain, though, about whether other programs might be safer or more effective, or whether this program is flawed because it doesn’t actually get addicts unaddicted.

Photo by Anthony Citrano

>> In case you forgot, John Mackey wrote an anti health care reform editorial in the Wall Street Journal, arguing that health care — and even food and shelter — are commodities people shouldn’t feel they have a right to.

>> Despite John Mackey’s views on health care and seeming skepticism that global climate change is indeed happening, the guy’s resignation isn’t exactly cause for rejoicing, Tom Philpott points out at Grist:

The investors now taking control of Whole Foods are likely more interested in the money than in the good. When profits falter, the “power of conscious capitalism” (the subtitle of Mackey’s book) succumbs to the power of unfettered capitalism. If I were a Whole Foods “team member,” I’d be seriously considering starting a union to protect wages and benefits. And as a backup plan, I’d be agitating for universal health care.

>> Did you know John Mackey’s tried “a therapeutic session of holotropic breathing” and followed the very veg Engine 2 Diet? A long profile on the guy in The New Yorker tells you more about the guy than you probably ever wanted to know: “The right-wing hippie is a rare bird, and it’s fair to say that most of Whole Foods’ shoppers have trouble conceiving of it.”

Earlier: Whole Foods to do more fair trade

Logo via Whole Foods

While all of us empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have to food or shelter? Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges.

>> That got some people to launch a boycott against Whole Foods.

>> The Omnivore’s Dilemma author Michael Pollan won’t be boycotting Whole Foods (via Ethicurean):

So Mackey is wrong on health care, but Whole Foods is often right about food, and their support for the farmers matters more to me than the political views of their founder. I haven’t examined the political views of all the retailers who feed me, but I can imagine having a lot of eating problems if I make them a litmus test.

>> Dave Murphy at Grist concurs with Michael. “A boycott of Whole Foods won’t make a difference on health care, and it might actually hurt something progressives care about — organic and natural farmers.”

I won’t be officially boycotting Whole Foods — but Mackey’s disgusting editorial’s grossed me out enough that I may just stick to shopping at Co-opportunity and the farmers’ market until the whole health care debate plays out in Washington.

However, I’m very lucky in that I live in a neighborhood with better shopping options for local, organic food than Whole Foods offers. I would hope that those living in less eco-foodie-friendly neighborhoods won’t feel like they now have to shun Whole Foods if that’s the best place they have to get local, organic food.

What do you think?

Poll closes Monday night.

Image via Whole Foods Boycott / Facebook

>> Find out how the health care reform bill’s coming along. Today’s news: To help pay for a revamped health care plan, U.S. hospitals will give up $155 billion in future Medicare and Medicaid payments. In exchange, the hospitals will be reimbursed above Medicare / Medicaid rates if a public health insurance plan’s included in the final bill. Lots of other kinks still have to be worked out of the bill, however, including whether or not to add a tax on some employer-provided health insurance benefits.

>> Confused as to what exactly this public health insurance plan’s gonna look like? That’s because Obama’s been very vague, as John Dickerson points out in Slate. As of now, there’s a big “gap between those who want a pure public option (a Medicare-for-all-type plan that would be separate from Medicare) and those who support a patient-owned cooperative that would be free from government control.”

>> Meanwhile, L.A. County still doesn’t have a Department of Health Services head. “Los Angeles County has lacked permanent leadership for its extensive network of public hospitals and clinics for more than a year, and that appears unlikely to change any time soon.”

Earlier: Finding health care outside employer-based health insurance