Tag Archives: time

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Top ten causes of death, US, 2020, and doctor time pressure

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

There is an article about US doctors, that primary care would have to work around the clock to apply all of the guidelines, here: https://news.uchicago.edu/story/primary-care-doctors-would-need-more-24-hours-day-provide-recommended-care.

Yes, but this is not new news. There was a trio of articles twenty years ago that said the same thing. And the guidelines have only expanded. Primary care is doing the same thing it has always done: what it can. Meanwhile we go to “Continuing Medical Education” and the other specialists ALL say we are not doing enough, we need to do more. Makes a woman cynical, don’t it?

Family Practice is a specialty, did you know that? We do a three year residency. Internal medicine is also three years, but many then “sub specialize” — further training in cardiology or rheumatology or nephrology, and etc. Sometimes we get a primary care doctor who doesn’t do the extra years but gets interested in something and they learn to subspecialize. We had a pulmonologist on the peninsula here, best I’ve worked with, who had not done the fellowship but learned it on the job. She was excellent and is now retired.

So you as a patient need to be aware of the top ten causes of death and do some thinking. Heart is still number one, in spite of Covid-19. All the cancer deaths are number two, but that’s only a fraction of the cancers. You want cancer screening, to pick it up before it is lethal. Pap smears, colon cancer screening, get your skin checked. Covid-19 is number three in 2020. Let’s look at the list.

US top ten causes of death, 2020.

  • Heart disease: 696,962
  • Cancer: 602,350
  • COVID-19: 350,831
  • Accidents (unintentional injuries): 200,955
  • Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 160,264
  • Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 152,657
  • Alzheimerโ€™s disease: 134,242
  • Diabetes: 102,188
  • Influenza and pneumonia: 53,544
  • Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 52,547

The list changes. What has fallen out of the top ten, since Covid-19 was not on the list back in 2019? “Intentional self-harm” aka suicide, was number ten in 2019.

Let’s go through the list one at a time and give you some basic tools and ideas about prevention, since your physician doesn’t have enough time to deal with all of it.

  1. Heart: The people who have not seen a doctor for twenty years, um, go see a doctor. If you have high blood pressure for twenty years, you will also have heart failure, which means pump failure. This is bad and will kill you. Check in at least every three to five years. In the US currently, you are a “new” patient after three years, so it’s best to show up just before that three year mark. Call ahead, everyone is short staffed. Check blood pressure, cholesterol and quit smoking (that includes pot, also bad for the heart), cocaine is very effective at trashing the heart, alcohol is bad for it, so is methamphetamines, and any other silly and stupid substance “overuse”. Kratom? Bad. Fake pot? Also bad. Turn off the tube or computer and go for a daily walk. Outside. Without headphones or earbuds. Try to figure out the bird noises, ok? Eat more vegetables. Don’t be stupid.
  2. Cancer: do the screening tests. Get the HPV vaccine for your children. Get pap smears. Use sun screen. Get your colonoscopy when you hit that age. Want to read about a screening test? Go to this site: https://uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/home . This is the clearing house for the current guidelines AND THEY CHANGE. They get updated. The vaccines are all here too. Get them.
  3. Covid-19. If you aren’t vaccinated then I don’t even want to talk to you, unless you are seriously immunosuppressed and your docs told you not to. Otherwise your brain has been taken over by non-scientist crazy whackos. IMHO.
  4. Accidents have been rising up the list and currently number one is opioid overuse deaths. Do not buy pills on the street because even if they claim to be oxycodone they may actually be fentanyl. The drug cartels aren’t so good at diluting the fentanyl enough to not kill you. If you are on prescribed opioids you should have a shot to reverse it (narcan shot or nasal spray) and your family or friends should know where it is and how to use it. Next is guns and cars. Guns should be locked up with the ammunition locked up separately when you are not working as a policemen or hunting a deer or rhinoceros. Cars should not be driven under the influence and hello seat belts. Oh, let’s see, wear your helmet on the bicycle, roller blades, e-bike, jet-skateboard or whatever. Wear a life jacket in the boat. Don’t point Axe towards your face and try to light the spray on fire.
  5. Stroke. This is all the same stuff as heart. And also Covid-19 increases your risk of stroke.
  6. Chronic lower respiratory disease: this is mostly caused by tobacco, tobacco, tobacco, marijuana, tobacco, asbestos, tobacco and woodsmoke or firefighting. Smoke is bad. Vapor is smoke, ok? See your doctor to get help quitting smoking. My father quit after 55 years of 2 packs a day of unfiltered Camels, so don’t tell me you can’t. Also it takes an average of 8 tries or so to quit. Yes you can.
  7. Alzheimer’s: keep your brain active, eyes are important, ears are important, eat those vegetables and if you live where I do, vitamin D in the winter.
  8. Diabetes: sweet drinks are bad. Fake sweet drinks are bad. A coke has 32 grams of carbohydrate. A Starbuck’s mocha 12 oz has 60. Quit drinking sweet drinks. Your goal is no more than 15 grams of sweetener a day. Now, what exactly is a carbohydrate? It’s anything edible that is not fat or protein. However, there are lots of very low carbohydrate vegetables out there. A cup of kale only has 8 grams of carbohydrate. Sweet peas and sugar beets have a lot more. Diabetics and everyone else should have at least half of every meal be vegetables, green and yellow and orange. Fruit is sweeter and all of the portion sizes (except kale) are less than you’d like to eat. Prevention is good.
  9. Influenza and pneumonia. Get your flu shot. There are two pneumonia shots and the first is given at age 65 and the second at 66. Except in people with heart or lung problems, then they get the vaccine early and repeat at 65 and 66. I think we are going to have a group of people who always mask on planes. I am one of them.
  10. Nephritis and etc. This is kidneys. What can affect your kidneys? Pills and illegal drugs, mostly. All pills that are absorbed are metabolized (which means broken down) by either the liver or the kidneys. Kidney function goes down slowly over a lifetime with age. We are seeing a huge rise in kidney problems because of too many pills. Yes, supplements too. Natural does not mean safe and what the heck is natural about a pill anyhow? Take as few pills as possible. Take ALL the pills to show your doctor. Ok, your doctor might be clueless about supplements. We had one person nearly hit the liver transplant stage until she showed my partner her supplement’s new label “Can affect the liver.” Holy cow. Should say “Can kill you.” So back to prevention: my baseline was that people should have blood lab basic testing every five years before age 50 and every three years after that if they were on NO PILLS. If they are on ANY pills, I recommend yearly testing. Did you know that the supplement companies can change what is in the pill at any time without telling you? Isn’t that reassuring? Heck no.
  11. There are still a long list of other causes of death. Liver disease, intentional self-harm, and on.

Since your doctor does not have time to think about all of this every time you stop by, it’s partly up to you. I don’t trust Dr. Google at all, but the sites I go to are the CDC, the Mayo Clinic, NIH, AAFP (American Academy of Family Practice). I look at lots of quack sites too, to see what is being sold, but I am not advertising them!

Be careful out there.

The photograph is Elwha watching the four point buck and wondering if it will eat him or not. From last week.

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tree time

The Ragtag Daily Prompt today is perpetuity. Trees have a different time sense then we do. They send electrical messages like we do, but they are slower. Still, the tree can change it’s leaves within hours, to taste bad or poison a pest. I wonder if we seem fast and short lived and impatient to them.

Here is my friend Simon Lynge’s Perpetual Now:

Simon Lynge Perpetual Now
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Ottaway back porch

My parents’ time warp Beatnik household, 1978, before I went to be an exchange student in Denmark.

We had a German exchange student living with us. She had been placed with a couple with no children, a military family, and was unhappy. My parents agreed that she could move in with us for the rest of her year. I decided to apply as an exchange student. I have not heard from her in years. Blessings, where ever she is.

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family

We visited both of my paternal aunts and uncle in Virginia in the last few days. The picture is one of my aunts and my daughter.

I also took a picture of these photographs.

Joan, Malcolm, Patricia Ottaway
Patricia, Malcolm and Joan Ottaway

My father is in the center, with my two aunts, taken at different dates. The one of my father is in 1938 or 39. Aunt Pat is the same one who is with my daughter.

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primary care medicine: schedule

I see patients from 8:30 or 8:00 am until 2:00 pm.

We have people say, “You are off after 2:00.”

Well, no. Most days I work for 2-3 hours beyond the patient contact time. Sometimes I come in early and sometimes it is from 2pm to 5pm and sometimes it is the weekend or into the evening.

So what am I doing?

  1. returning phone calls
  2. doing refills. To do a refill I check when the patient was last seen and whether they are due for laboratory.
  3. reading specialist notes and updating medicine lists, diagnoses and contacting patients to get tests or follow up that the specialist has recommended
  4. reviewing lab results and sending a letter or signing to be scanned and to be available at the follow up visit or calling the patient
  5. reading emergency room notes and hospital discharge summaries and setting those patients up for follow up, updating medicine lists and adding to diagnosis lists.
  6. dealing with multiple stupid letters from insurance companies questioning the medication that I have prescribed. Mostly I mail these to patients.
  7. running my small business: long term planning, short term planning, advertising, commercial insurance
  8. 50 hours of continuing medical education yearly
  9. ย Updating my medical license, medical specialty board eligibility, business license, CAQH, DEA number, Clia lab waiver, medicare’s shifting rules, medicaid’s shifting rules, tricare’s rules, and 1300 insurance company’s shifting rules and medicine rejections and prior authorizations even for a medicine a person has been on for 20 years.
  10. Worrying about small business costs as reimbursement costs drop: health insurance. Retirement. L&I. Employees. Malpractice insurance, small business insurance, the lease, staff costs.
  11. ย Discussing and updating medical supplies and equipment, office supplies and equipment
  12. Updating clinic policies and paperwork per the change in laws. Have you read the Obamacare Law? Over 3000 pages. HIPAA. The DEA. Recommendations from the CDC, federal laws, state laws, internet security, patient financial and social security security.
  13. Trying to track what we collect. That is, say I bill $200.00. Since I accept insurance, the insurer will tell me what is the “allowed” amount per me contracting as a “preferred” provider. The “allowed” amount is really the contracted amount. Then the insurance company either pays it or says that the patient has a deductible. This could be $150 per year or $5000.00 per year. With medicare I then have to bill a secondary if the person has it and then anything left is billed to the patient. Oh, don’t forget copays, if they don’t pay that we have to bill it. So to get paid the complete contracted amount, aka “allowed” we may have to submit bills to two or even three insurances and the patient. We might be done two months after the patient is seen.
  14. Trying to convince recalcitrant computers and printers and equipment that indeed, it doesn’t have a virus, oh, or maybe it does, and fixing them.

My goals are to give excellent care AND to work 40 hours a week. Half of my patients are over 65 and many are complicated, with multiple chronic illnesses.ย  When I saw patients 4 days a week for 8 hours, with an hour hospital clinic meeting every day, I also spent at least an additional 8 hours and more trying to keep up with most of those things above. The average family practice physician makes more money than I do. But they also report working 60-70 hours a week on average. I do not think this is good for patients or doctors or doctors’ families or their spouses or children. The primary care burn out report rose from 40% to 50% of the doctors surveyed.

We need change, we need it now, and we need to be realistic about how much work is healthy.

When I was still delivering babies, women would ask if I could guarantee doing the delivery. I would explain: “We do call for up to 72 hours. If you go into labor at the end of that, you would rather have a physician who is awake and rested and has good judgement. Besides, I’m a bit grumpy after 72 hours. ” And they agreed that they really don’t want an exhausted burned out physician.

I took the photograph of Mordechai, our skeleton, today. She is genuine plastic. I wish she would do some of the paperwork, but at least she lightens things by making us laugh. She gets various wigs and outfits and sometimes comes out to show a patient a hip joint.

I am NOT attracted to paperwork. I think I am repelled. For the Daily Prompt: magnetic.