Tale of Two Medicines
Physicians are only as effective as their advice is taken by the patient. A new paper from Sweden demonstrates that patients who are hospitalized for asthma in a socialized medicine country are only followed up by a specialist one third of the time. Also, in the initial year after hospitalization for asthma, the patient only is prescribed asteroid inhaler 50 percent of the time and only complies 30 percent of the time. Patients are not referred to a specialist for a majority of the post hospital visits. The article concludes that 60 percent of the asthmatics are not controlled in Sweden. This is in a country with socialized medicine at no cost for the patient, with an educated population and relatively ethnically homogenous country. Many of the assumptions we have about race education and access to care may not be true.
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