Mighty Casey Media: Comedy Health Analyst

Stop screaming. Laughing hurts less.

Business

World on fire. Film at 11.

by 5 Comments

I wasn’t lucky enough to get a press pass, or a scholarship, to HIMSS15 this year. Given events of the last few days, I’m really sorry I can’t be on the ground in Chicago for what feels like a grassroots revolt brewing in protest of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) dropping an announcement, on Friday late afternoon, that they were thinking of gutting the rules for patient access to their own records under the “Meaningful Use” criteria of healthcare reform. You know, the one where we spent something like $6B of taxpayer money. Which was supposed to make care easier, safer, cheaper.

There are phases and stages of Meaningful Use. We’re in MU2 right now. Originally, by the end of the MU2 period (running through 2020), a practice or facility had to demonstrate that 5% of the people/patients cared for in that practice or facility viewed, downloaded, or transmitted their personal health information (PHI) to a 3rd party. That was the criteria for a healthcare provider seeking stimulus $$ for EHR technology deployment [updating: and Medicare reimbursement].

Here’s the “new” rule (clue train: instead of 5%, it’s 1. No, not 1%, one patient) being proposed:

mu2-gutting

I know, right? Friday afternoon, everyone in the industry is heading to Chicago for HIMSS15, who’ll care? Sorry, CMS, but you are totally busted. Here’s data access rights activist Regina Holliday, who’s at HIMSS and whose hair is now on fire:

Speaking of “hair on fire” … so’s mine.

Seems like the Empire is trying to strike back. Or the Capitol (the big-money healthcare industry players who drop money on K Street lobbyists like snowflakes in Boston in the winter of 2014) thinks it’s run over all the Districts (patients, caregivers, families) and has little to fear from our powerlessness. I think they’re wrong. Dead wrong. And they’re about to find out just *how* wrong. Expert, activist patients, along with savvy clinical folks whose hearts are truly in their work, are now assembled in District 13.

My take can be summed up in this image [updated on Tuesday, April 14]:

bluebutton mockingjay mashup image

We are coming for your silos. Because it’s OUR data, and OUR lives.

Report from the front lines: Technology, engagement, and killing paternalism

by 1 Comment

I’ve spent a good portion of the last two months on the healthcare equivalent of the political stump – called the “rubber chicken circuit” in political circles. Thankfully, there was no actual rubber chicken served during these sojourns, although there was the incident of the seductive breakfast sausage, followed by my solo re-enactment (off stage) of the bridal salon scenes from the movie “Bridesmaids.” I will draw the veil of charity (and gratitude for travel expense coverage) over the details of that incident, and just advise all of you to stick to fruit, cereal, or bagels at conference breakfasts. ‘Nuff said.

My original editorial calendar plan was to turn this into a series of posts, broken down by focus into technology and clinical categories. However, since a big part of my goal in standing on the barricades at the gates of the healthcare castle, waving my digital pikestaff in service of system transformation, is breaking down silos … well, go grab a sandwich, and a beverage. This is gon’ be a long one.

HIMSS Patient Engagement Summit

In early February, I headed to Orlando for the first Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Patient Engagement Summit. I was asked to participate in two panel discussions, one titled “Patient Perspectives: The State of Engagement,” the other “Can We Talk? The Evolving Physician-Patient Relationship.” Both were moderated by Dr. Patricia Salber, the bright mind behind The Doctor Weighs In.

Being a person with no letters after her name (like Elizabeth Holmes [update: she’s trash, so redacted] and Steve Jobs, I’m a college dropout), I’m used to showing up at healthcare industry events and being seen as something of a unicorn fairy princess. That’s how people commonly called “patients” are usually viewed in industry settings outside the actual point of care. Healthcare professionals/executives are so used to seeing us as revenue units, or data points, or out cold on a surgical table, but not as walking/talking/thinking humans, they can do a spit-take when meeting an official “patient” at an industry conference. Which is fun if they have a mouthful of coffee, but I haven’t seen anyone actually get sprayed yet.

All kidding aside, I really have to hand it to HIMSS for their uptake speed on seeing people/patients as valuable voices in the conversation about healthcare IT and quality improvement. In the time since they first noticed (in 2009, I believe) that people like ePatient Dave deBronkart, Regina Holliday, and others might have something to add to the discussion, they’ve made a visible effort to include people/patient voices in their national programs. Of course, had they not invited patients to present at their Patient Engagement Summit, they would have been line for a public [digital] beating … and so there we were: Amy Gleason, Kym Martin, Alicia Staley, and yours truly, ready to grab a mic and speak some truth.

A favorite tweet during the opening keynote by Dr. Kyra Bobinet, a friend of mine via our mutual membership in the Stanford MedX community:

I see patient engagement as healthcare that nourishes the people it serves, and also as a nutrient for the healthcare delivery system itself. Healthcare itself will get better, in its body (clinicians and all other folks who work inside the system) and in its spirit (its culture), with authentic connection – engagement – with the human community who seeks its help in maintaining or regaining good health.

Both panels went well, and the audience seemed to be both awake, and interested in what we had to say. For those of us who have been working the user – PATIENT – side of healthcare transformation, it’s frustrating that we’re still saying the same things to professional audiences that we’ve been saying for (in my case) close to 20 years now. But those of us on the patient side of this change management rodeo can sense a paradigm shift, and are starting to believe that we’re seeing transformation slowly deploy across the healthcare system. As the oft-repeated William Gibson quote goes, “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed.”

Patients ARE engaged. We’re working our butts off to get medical professionals and healthcare execs on the same page as us. Like the old story goes, when it comes to bacon and eggs, the chicken’s involved, but the pig’s fully committed. In the bacon-and-eggs of healthcare, patients are the bacon. We’re all in, and we know more, in many ways, about how to fix the system than the “professionals” do. Alicia Staley said, again, what she says consistently to healthcare audiences, “You need a Chief Patient Officer on your board.” So … get one. And we all need to be wary of blaring headlines, which can be very misleading when it comes to the real health risks we all face:

HIMSS Privacy + Security Forum

In early March, I winged my way out to San Diego, one of my several hometowns (growing up a Navy kid means you get more than one) for the HIMSS Privacy + Security Forum. I was a panelist for the last session of the conference, which I knew meant that many of the attendees would already be in the TSA screening line at Lindbergh Field, but I was going to share my thoughts with whomever stuck around, even if it was just the busboys. Our session was titled “What Matters Most: Patient Perspectives on Privacy & Security,” and what happened at the end of our panel was something I had hoped for – several of the folks who had stuck around come up to us and said, “that panel should have opened this conference!”

When it comes to IT security, the healthcare industry is rightly terrified, given the epic bitch-slap that a HIPAA fine can be ($1.5 million dollars per incident) – and the irony of the Anthem data breach affecting up to 8.8 million of their members making headlines the week before this conference was not lost on me … or any of the other folks at the HIMSS Forum meeting. Yet it’s critical to note that access, by patients and by clinicians, particularly at the point of care, to all the relevant data necessary to deliver the right care at the right time to the right patient, is still an undelivered promise across the health IT landscape. So don’t be Mordac, Dilbert’s Preventer of Information Services – we have enough of him. He’s like a freakin’ virus.

Hilariously, the day before I traveled to San Diego, I had to threaten a HIPAA complaint to get my records transferred from one provider to another. I had been asking for TWO MONTHS for the rads practice where I had gotten my mammograms 2009 through 2011 (twice a year in 2009 and 2010, given my Cancer Year of 2008) to send my scans and reports to my current mammography radiologist, and it took a voicemail with a HIPAA violation threat to get someone to call me back. My records are so damn secure that NO ONE can get them, except for “Robert in the basement” at [rhymes with … Bon Secours]. It felt like I was talking to Central Services in the Terry Gilliam movie “Brazil.” And people wonder why I have a QR code linked to my health history tattooed on my sternum …

Lown Institute RightCare conference

Speaking of right care/right time/right patient, two days after the HIMSS Privacy + Security Forum wrapped, the Lown Institute’s RightCare 2015 conference kicked off just down the street.

Dr. Bernard Lown is the cardiologist who invented the cardiac defibrillator in the 1960s, and who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for his part in creating the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. The Lown Institute, founded to continue the work on healthcare and human rights that Dr. Lown has devoted his life to, states as its mission “We seek to catalyze a grassroots movement for transforming healthcare systems and improving the health of communities.”

In short, this event made me feel like I’d taken a trip in the Wayback Machine to my college days 1970-1973 in the Haight Ashbury in San Francisco … without the LSD, but with all the fire of my youth, mixed with the wealth of mature knowledge I’ve managed to velcro on to myself in the decades since. The real beauty part? There were lots of young people in the room, who are the age today that I was 40 years ago (in my early twenties), speaking up for the human rights of the people served by the healthcare system. The ones commonly called “patients.”

I got a chance at a scholarship to #Lown2015 after meeting Shannon Brownlee during our work on the Patient & Family Engagement Roadmap, and our attendance at Dartmouth’s SIIPC14 “informed patient choice” conference last year. She tipped me off that scholarships were available, I applied, and got lucky by snagging one. Doubly lucky, because it put me in the room while some of the leading voices on the clinical side of medicine called out the industry they work in for being slow to fully enfranchise the people they serve – patients – by being too driven by money, and not driven enough by their own humanity. A sampling:

And, because it just ain’t a movement unless this gets thrown down:

The bedrock message here? The democratization of knowledge that’s been delivered thanks to the Information Age has lifted the scales from the eyes of the early-adopter people/patients who are on to what healthcare is now, and what it must become to remain sustainable, or even relevant. Patients are coming up off their knees. The occupants of the ivory towers of medicine must descend from their aeries, or risk being flung from the parapets. Like winter …

ned stark Game of Thrones patients are coming
image credit: HBO

Patient Engagement. You’re doing it wrong.

by 6 Comments

frustrated patient with word balloon

Now that I have, for my sins, been tagged as a patient engagement expert, I figure that entitles me to the occasional rant on the topic of the healthcare system – particularly the US iteration thereof – and its utter inability to understand how to connect and communicate effectively with its customer base: patients.

If you’ve been a patient, for anything beyond a short trip to your primary care doc for something simple (and easily diagnosed) like a laceration or a minor infection, you know that arriving at the doors of The Medical-Industrial Complex is like being the new kid in school.

There’s an old joke about bacon and eggs – the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed. In the ongoing sketch comedy/Shakespearean tragedy that is medical care. the clinical teams who deliver care, and the facilities in which they deliver it, are most certainly involved. Patients? We’re fully committed. We are engaged, we are fully present. What we’re not getting from the delivery side is an authentic invitation to engage.

en•gage•ment: noun, a formal agreement, i.e. to get married; an arrangement to do something at a specific time; the act of being engaged, i.e. “continued engagement in trade agreements”

Seems simple, right? Patient appears, asking for care. Clinical professionals deliver that care. Patient happy, clinicians happy, everybody wins. Oh, wait – did the doctor wash her hands before she started the physical exam? If the patient is aware of the importance of handwashing in preventing infection, and asks if the doctor lathered up and rinsed according to protocol, does that patient risk being labeled “difficult” or “aggressive”?

If so, so much for patient engagement. Given that the statistics on handwashing in healthcare settings aren’t at 100% (~ 90% for RNs, < 75% for attending MDs in a 2008 study at an Ohio hospital), clinical folks are as non-compliant as the patients they slap that label onto.

Then there’s the whole medical records dance. I got so sick of filling out health history forms that I said, out loud and online, that I’d get a barcode tattooed on my neck if it meant I never had to fill out another one. Even if you’ve been to a practice countless times before, you’ll likely have to fill one out EVERY. TIME. you have an office visit. Then, if you actually want to SEE your health history – the one contained in the electronic health record (EHR) system, hospital or office, or even the old school paper version – it’s like petitioning the Vatican for a dispensation: begging, more paperwork, and the forking over of cash money.

[Side note: I did tattoo my medical history on myself – not a barcode on my neck, but a QR code on my sternum. It’s visible online as my Twitter avatar – without the password that opens the page, of course.]

When you need medical care, you want to know what your treatment options are. Your doctors should be using a shared decision making approach, where they outline the options and possible outcomes of each one. They also should be able to provide you with COST impacts of the various options, but they don’t – usually because they can’t, since the array of insurance plans they take don’t make cost/price information easy to find.

We can thank what I call “stupid payer tricks” for the opacity of the money side of medical care delivery. Cost – the reimbursement numbers for physicians and facilities, along with the patient co-pay numbers – is considered “proprietary negotiated rate information” that’s the property of the insurance company. They dole it out in drips, only AFTER the bill has been submitted. Imagine buying a car, or a house, and signing the sales contract with no price on it, while being told that the bill will arrive in 60/90/120 days, and that’s what you’ll have to pay.

Hard to engage with something like what’s outlined above, isn’t it?

Add to all this the perception by the people who aren’t regular users of the healthcare system that healthcare is something that happens “over there, to sick people, but not to me,” and you have a complete lack of system literacy for healthy folks. Until, of course, they wind up at the hospital door with “a thing” – a car wreck, cancer – when they have to navigate new territory while sick, and in pain, without a map.

What’s needed here is not another earnest academic study from the health-system side, examining how to drive patient engagement. What we need is a grassroots-led effort, by expert patients who have created maps navigating the “new territory” mentioned above, to work with the doctors, nurses, administrators, data geeks, and scientists who recognize the need to flip the patient engagement paradigm from top down – Ivory Tower Rules – to bottom up: built with patients.

Let patients help.

#epatient – Are Millennials Born That Way?

by 1 Comment

Most of the people I meet in my voyages ’round healthcare system transformation, grassroots edition, arrived at the portal of #epatient via a trip through the medical-industrial complex. Either they, or someone they cared for, wound up getting “a thing” – cancer, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, player to be named later – and they found themselves inside the medical care delivery system, bewildered, and looking for answers.

In short, most – not all, by any means, but most – are over 40.

Imagine my surprise, and delight, when I was sent a report on a survey conducted with 385 randomly selected patients across the US*, with most of the responses coming from 18 to 35 year old millennials (people born 1982 and after). The survey asked them their opinions on shared decision making, open notes, and shared medical visits, three new medical practice models that are rising in adoption.

Here’s the context of the survey questions:

  • Shared decision-making involves the doctor and patient evaluating multiple treatment options and deciding together on the best course of action.
  • Open notes is a policy allowing patients to view the medical notes doctors take about them during visits, which includes accessing those notes from home.
  • Shared medical appointments, or “group visits,” involve attending an extended (60- to 90-minute) medical appointment with 10 to 15 other patients and one or more physicians.

The survey results make me think we might finally be reaching a tipping point toward positive change, given that a big majority (76%) of respondents said they were extremely or very likely to use shared decision making. Over 60% were extremely or very likely to welcome open notes:

Millennial PM Likelihood 4

 

The demographics of the survey respondents was a pretty representative sample as far as chronic conditions go:

Millennial PM Chronic Disease

One surprise in the demographic detail was that more men responded than women. Given that, historically at least, women have been more likely to use the medical care system (annual Pap smears, reproductive health visits) than men, the fact that men outnumbered women in this gives me even more hope. Are dudes getting it? “It” being that their health is their responsibility, and that a relationship with a good primary care provider is a good life plan.

Millennial PM Gender

To recap, millennials want shared decision making and open notes. Shared/group appointments, not so much. I think that the shared/group appointment approach would be best deployed in “building health literacy” settings: condition-specific education on diabetes, for example. I also think that telemedicine needs its own survey, given that practice model could be used both real-time or asynchronously via secure video links.

The millennial generation has grown up with digital tools and instant access to information. I seriously doubt that they’re going to be willing to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous wait times, or outrageous balance billing, when they seek medical care. Hope for real system transformation may have crested the distant horizon, and be riding toward us. May its speed be supersonic.

*Source: Practice Management systems consultancy Software Advice

The State of Health Information Exchange: Benefits and Challenges

by 1 Comment

This is a guest post by TechnologyAdvice.com writer Jesse Jacobsen. TechnologyAdvice.com is based in Nashville, TN, and their stated mission is to provide valuable insight to business technology buyers, while creating connections with the products and vendors that best meet those buyers’ needs. Their site is a goldmine of industry-specific intel on current software and IT products and trends … and they have a dedicated healthcare tech content channel!

graphic of tablet with EKGAccording to the 2013 HIMSS Analytics Report, 73 percent of respondents indicated they were participating in health information exchange (HIE), with 57 percent only participating in a single HIE. Of the practices in an HIE, 52 percent reported experiencing benefits with better access to patient information, 20 percent experience promoted patient safety, and 12 percent said HIE led to time savings among clinicians. Only 16 percent reported no benefits.

As evidenced above, HIEs can be effective tools for improved practice operations, but that doesn’t mean the system is foolproof. In the same report from HIMSS, the top challenges faced by hospitals included other organizations not sharing enough data (49 percent), lack of necessary staff (44 percent) and resources (40 percent), and privacy concerns (39 percent).

As government mandates continue to push provider use of electronic medical records (EMRs) and HIEs, more practices are beginning to consider if it’s time to participate in a health information exchange. The following will look at some of the current benefits from HIE participation and address some current challenges.

Benefits

Better Patient Information

HIEs provide physicians with easier access to patient information, especially on a state level, such as the recently implemented HIE in Florida. Currently, accessing patient information can be a costly and inefficient process, with too much reliance on faxing and email. Utilizing an information exchange makes gaining patient data a quick process with far fewer expenses.

Reduced Imaging Duplication

By reducing duplication of diagnostic tests, physicians can heavily reduce expenses and increase practice efficiency. According to a study from the University of Michigan, around 20 percent of all scans performed by emergency department clinicians were considered repeats. When hospitals used HIEs, patients were 59 percent less likely to have a redundant CT scan, 44 percent less likely to get an additional ultrasound, and 67 percent less likely to have a repeated chest X-ray. Eliminating such duplication can result in significant cost savings for providers, patients, and payers.

Improved Care and Reduced Errors

Simply put, when doctors have quick and easy access to patient records, they can make informed and effective treatment decisions. Without access to this information, physicians are basing diagnosis and treatment decisions on a narrow view of their patient’s health history. With quick access to a longitudinal view of a patient’s health history, physicians can see current and past prescriptions, previous diagnoses, reactions to medications, and any other pertinent information. This information is essential when prescribing medication to ensure that new prescriptions won’t adversely interact with current medication that patients are taking. Between 26 and 32 percent of total medication errors are caused by administrative errors. These are potentially fatal mistakes that can easily be prevented with proper HIE implementation.

Use in Emergencies

For patients in emergency situations, time is of the essence. Being able to access patient information from HIEs helps clinicians act quickly and responsibly. In 2009, the average time spent being treated in emergency rooms was four hours and seven minutes, an increase of 27 minutes since 2002. Increased treatment time in the ER results in increased wait times, which on average took six hours in 2009. ER doctors can decrease patient interaction and wait times with quick and easy access to patient records from HIEs, including information on allergies, past treatments, pre-existing conditions, and applicable test results.

In addition, emergency departments can use HIEs to reduce expenses and unnecessary admissions. According to a study conducted by Weill Cornell Medical College, the chances of a patient being admitted to the hospital was 30 percent lower when the HIE was used, leading to estimated annual savings of $357,000. Decreasing unnecessary admissions also results in shorter wait times.

Challenges

Security Concerns

A report published by the Bipartisan Policy Center found that 25 percent of clinicians cited privacy and liability concerns as barriers to participating in health information exchanges.  The argument behind these security concerns is logically sound; if HIE affiliates have increased ease of access to patient information, who else might have this increased access as well? How can we be sure that sensitive patient and practice information is secure? After all, HIPAA violations are quite expensive.

While this concern is justified, most HIE affiliates recognize this potential shortcoming and have established a wide array of policies to prevent any information leaks. For example, when electronic requests for patient information from a healthcare provider are made from an unknown provider, most HIEs refuse to provide any data. As these platforms for data exchange continue to advance and increase in adoption, more policies and safeguards will be put into place to ensure the security of patient files.

Inconsistent or Insufficient Information

Many healthcare providers who have already integrated HIEs into their practice complain that insufficient patient information and inconsistent filing methods are a huge hindrance to HIE success. Data fragmentation is already an issue for the healthcare system as a whole, costing up to $226 billion per year.

Unfortunately, this is a challenge will take time and continual effort to alleviate. As more hospitals and practices begin sharing data, and as the government groups continue to establish detailed, reasonable standards for patient records, data silos will be broken down.

Insufficient Funds

For many providers, developing HIE networks makes very little sense strictly as a business investment. According to a study from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 74 percent of respondents listed developing a sustainable business model as a moderate or substantial barrier to HIE deployment, in addition to a high level of concern about a lack of funding (66 percent).

To tackle this issue, some practices are joining cloud-based HIEs, which charge monthly fees, alleviating the heavy upfront costs typically incurred by other systems. These pay-as-you-go systems can become more expensive than their counterparts however when used for a long period of time. Additionally, transferring patient information through the cloud presents a potential security concern. But, for cash-strapped practices seeking a means to effectively exchange data, a cloud-based community could be the answer.

Lack of Infrastructure

Similar to lacking proper funding, many healthcare providers list a lack of infrastructure as a major challenge with HIE. A survey from Doctors Helping Doctors Transform Health Care found that 71 percent of respondents listed lack of infrastructure as a primary challenge. Adding infrastructure is not only expensive because the infrastructure itself is pricey, but also because the labor and resources required to outfit new systems are expensive as well.

Again, selecting a cloud-based solution can alleviate many infrastructure shortcomings. Cloud systems require very little on premise infrastructure to gain access, and accordingly require minimal labor investment to setup. While building the proper infrastructure to maintain a normal HIE is recommended, cloud-based options are growing in popularity and accessibility, making it a viable solution for smaller practices and struggling health care providers.

HIEs are far from perfect, but the information and resources they provide can add value to practices everywhere. Unfortunately, many of the improvements that need to happen to HIEs simply require time and commitment from a large volume of healthcare providers. The technology is there, and eventually the commitment and investment from practices will be as well.

GM recalls are bad. Medical device recalls are worse.

by Leave a Comment

It’s bad enough when your GM SUV turns into a rolling fire hazard.

Imagine needing, and getting, a hysterectomy, only to discover that the surgical procedure itself turned you into an advanced stage cancer patient?

USPTO image of morcellator
Giant sucking sound. And cancer risk.

That’s exactly what’s been going on since power morcellators became common in laparoscopic uterine surgery to remove fibroids. In morcellation, the fibroid tissue, and/or the entire uterus, is ground up prior to being sucked out of the abdominal cavity. I’m sure that you, and I, can do the biological math on this question, “What if that fibroid is cancerous?” Yep, that would mean that previously encapsulated cancer cells would be set free to run rampant through the aircraft – the patient’s body – spreading its metastatic self far and wide.

Why didn’t anyone at the FDA do that bio-math? Turns out that when these devices were approved in the late ’90s, since other similar devices were already on the market, no clinical trials were ever done. Here’s a graf from the NY Times back in April, talking about this very thing:

“Morcellators were allowed onto the market in the 1990s without the usual clinical trials in patients because they were similar to other devices that had already been approved — a process that critics of the agency say can lead to safety problems like the one that has now been recognized.”

I’ve known about morcellators for only about 10 months – which is surprising, considering my interest in medical quality and patient safety – but my eyes were opened by my buddy Gilles Frydman, the man who started the Association of Cancer Online Resources (ACOR), which gets credit for helping some friends of mine, including ePatient Dave himself, save their own lives by giving them the information they needed to fully participate in their own care. Gilles is also behind SmartPatients.com, but I digress. Gilles tipped me off to the morcellation controversy when we were both at a meeting at a major pharma company – irony! – and asked me to add my voice to the “Morcellator, begone!” chorus. Which I did.

I was delighted to see stories in Medscape and the Wall Street Journal about the FDA warning. But I was not delighted at the fact that it was simply a warning, and an end to sales, not a full-on recall. Because that means that morcellators are still out there in surgical suites and ORs across the globe, putting women’s lives at risk.

One bright spot in this morcellated mess arrived in my inbox last Monday (Aug. 4, 2014) from American Recall Center. I saw the send address, and wondered if my car was getting recalled again. When I opened the email, I discovered that American Recall Center is all and only about medical device and pharma recalls – what a great idea, and how double-delighted I am to learn of its existence.

Here are the facts about morcellation, and its unintended outcome in gynecological surgery:

  • Hysterectomy is the 2nd most common surgery among women in the United States
  • By age 70, one out of three American women will have had a hysterectomy
  • 90% of these surgeries are done to remove fibroids (non-cancerous tumors found in the uterus)
  • The average life span following accidental morcellation of sarcoma is only 24-36 months (editor’s note: WHOA)
  • Only 15% of women who have leiomyosarcoma (LMS) that has spread (stage 4) will be alive after 5 years
  • Women with sarcoma who are morcellated are about 4 times more likely to die from sarcoma than if they had not been morcellated

If you’d like to know more, visit the ARC’s power morcellator page. If you’ve had a hysterectomy or myomectomy where a morcellator was used, you can get a claim review, gratis, from ARC.

Add your voice to the “Morcellator, begone!” chorus – let’s not leave it at “warning,” let’s get these power tools from hell removed from medical practice, shall we?

Addendum: Turns out there’s a page on the ARC site that actually talks about GM recalls. So my opening comment turns out to be not *just* snarky.