The COVID-19 crisis is highlighting an urgent need to improve the health literacy of our institutions and the public, according to the authors below. Millions of Australians do not have sufficient health literacy to understand complex COVID-19 communications, and this problem is exacerbated by the [...]
In the article below, Dr Ray Moynihan explores some of the reasons why tackling the complex problem of too much medicine remains a big priority in the COVID era. This article is published as part of the TOO MUCH of a Good Thing series, which is investigating how to reduce [...]
Imaging reports are the primary method of communicating diagnostic imaging findings between the radiologist and the referring clinician. Guidelines produced by professional bodies provide guidance on content and format of imaging reports, but the extent to which they consider comprehensibility for referring clinicians and their [...]
A 65 year old woman presents with continuous dull back ache and leg pain over the past four years. She underwent lumbar decompression surgery three months ago, but the pain persists. She has no neurological deficits. She is on treatment for hypertension and chronic kidney [...]
This article highlights the importance of local context in making decisions about implementing interventions for preventing non-communicable diseases
Considerable effort is made worldwide to measure performance of health systems, to ensure care is safe, high quality, effective and cost-effective. Many performance indicators involve rates of occurrence of an event, such as mortality, readmission, or complication rates. Commonly, these rates are estimated using administrative [...]
Part of Australia’s response to the coronavirus pandemic was a severe reduction in elective surgery, and so private hospitals have stood almost empty for a month now. People who might otherwise have had a procedure are experiencing “watchful waiting”, where their condition is monitored to assess [...]
We hear increasingly about the importance of tackling overtreatment, but less often about how overtreatment plays out in the lives of patients and their families. In the article below, Brooke Nickel describes how the use of the word ‘cancer’ can lead to so many issues [...]
We all understand the role of clinical trials in testing new medicines but many people would be surprised to find out that there are different regulatory processes in place for the introduction of new medical devices and surgical techniques and procedures. This can mean that [...]
Australia is one of the first high-income countries to implement primary human papillomavirus (HPV)-based screening, ahead of the USA, UK, Canada and New Zealand. Primary HPV testing has recently become one of the recommended options for cervical screening in the USA, but patients may need [...]