Results tagged “droz”

Newsweek's cover story this week is about Oprah Winfrey and "Why Health Advice on Oprah Could Make You Sick." Ouch! The first example mentions how actress Suzanne Somers was on the show, explaining her hormone therapy regime ("She smears progesterone on her other arm two weeks a month. And once a day, she uses a syringe to inject estrogen directly into her vagina"), prompting Oprah to say, "Many people write Suzanne off as a quackadoo. But she just might be a pioneer." While Oprah did have critics present, they weren't given the prominence Somers had; Albert Einstein College of Medicine director of endocrinology tells Newsweek that Somers "simply repackag[ed] the old, discredited idea that menopause is some kind of hormone-deficiency disease, and that restoring them will bring back youth." While many of Oprah's medical endorsements are taken to task, Newsweek does give props for Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Columbia Presbyterian cardiac surgeon: "On one show, 'Everybody Poops,' Oz conducted a genuinely fascinating seminar on what comes out the other end. (It should be shaped like an S and 'hit the water like a diver from Acapulco.' Who knew?)"

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital hopes to offer all of its patients access to their personal health records online. The NY Times reports the hospital, which has been working with Microsoft for a year, is starting the rollout with heart surgery patients. On the myNYP.org website, you'll see cardiac surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, familiar to many from his appearances on Oprah Winfrey's show—he tells the Times that many of his patients are referrals outside the hospital, "When they arrive, Dr. Oz said, they typically come in with incomplete paper records and patchy recollections of past care. When they leave the hospital, he added, they get paper records of their care and a check-list of reminders." Which Dr. Oz thinks is "dangerous and cumbersome" because many mistakes could be made, whereas an online record "can be accessed by the patient and, with permission, relatives and a patient’s personal physician" and easier for patients to keep up with their care. The federal stimulus bill has $19 billion set aside for creating electronic medical records; Tampa Bay is working on digitizing all prescriptions and records in a 10-county area.