Cost of cancer care

File this one under the "Holy Cow!" tab: Cancer care related costs are predicted to be as high at $207 billion (that's right, billion) by 2020. Of course there are a lot of caveats to that prediction, assuming we don't get any better at deciding who needs chemo (with genetic testing and so forth), and that the cost of cancer care continues to increase at its current rate of 5%. But, even still, that is a shocking number. I can't imagine that reigning in health care costs and real health care reform won't also include tamping down on the cost of treating cancer in this country. And making the decisions about what areas or prices to cut will not be easy (and given the graying of the US, it also will affect a lot of people. A lot of people who vote, making that politically unsavory, I'm afraid).

Is there a right way to say goodbye to your patients when you are transitioning to a different practice or a different job? One blogger thinks so. Read the comments, they are illustrative of the difficulties of practicing in big practices where uniform notification of your patient panel may not always be possible. I think we all know that we would expect to be notified if our doctor was changing, so it seems a no-brainer to me that we should extend the same courtesy to our patients. It would also seem to be a public relations "win" for whoever owned our group or practice.