Re: Kid's pediatrician asked about guns in the house
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: allwheeldriven</div><div class="ubbcode-body">When I did Pedi rotations this question was asked simply to make sure that parents are aware that guns needs to be locked up or kept out of reach of their children.
I am not sure what the paranoia some of you guys seem to be demonstrating is based on.
The answers to those questions don’t go in to any kind of record...
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Baloney! This is a standard intake question in most commercial EMR (Electronic Medical record) software. The answer becomes a <span style="text-decoration: underline">permanent</span> part of the medical record. With rare exceptions, the answer gets sent with all the rest of the "fluff" padding the record to maximize billing reimbursement on <span style="text-decoration: underline">every</span> bill sent to insurance and government payers.
Except for the rare "cash only" boutique medical practice, the EMR is standard. In general, the doctor can't get paid by insurance or welfare without the electronic billing/record modules.
If you want to know the intent of these "pediatric" questions, look at Katherine Kaufer Christoffel MD's publications (and those of Arthur Kellermann MD et al.) from the 1990's. "Safety" is the cover story used by this cabal of seriously committed gun banners.
If you really want a show-stopper, simply mention to your gun ban doctor that <span style="color: red"><span style="font-weight: bold">doctors kill 5 times as many people as guns.</span></span>
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">...<span style="font-weight: bold">Cost-without-benefit analysis (Doctors or Guns – Which is the deadlier menace?)</span>
Amongst the most pervasive flaws in the medical literature on guns is the discussion of the “costs” of gun violence without any consideration of the innocent lives saved by guns. These and other benefits of guns are not so “intangible” as has been dogmatically claimed.17 We would be mortified if our colleagues’ cost-without-benefit analysis18,19 became the standard for evaluating the medical profession. The 1990 Harvard Medical Practice Study quantified non-psychiatric inpatient deaths from physician negligence (excluding outpatient, extended care, and inpatient psychiatric deaths) in New York State.20 “If these rates are typical of the United States, then 180,000 people die each year partly as a result of iatrogenic injury, the equivalent of three jumbo-jet crashes every two days.”21 – almost five times the number of Americans killed with guns. One might fairly conclude from such a “costs only” analysis that doctors are a deadly public menace. Why do we not reach that conclusion? Because, in balance, doctors save many more lives than they take and so it is with guns....
17 Kassirer JP. Correspondence. N Engl J. Med 1992; 326:1159-60.
18 Adler KP, Barondess JA, Cohen JJ, Farber SJ, et al. Firearm violence and public health: limiting the availability of guns. JAMA. 1994; 271(16): 1281-83.
19 Mock C, Pilcher S, and Maier R. Comparison of the costs of acute treatment for gunshot and stab wounds: further evidence of the need for firearms control. J. Trauma. 1994; 36(4):516-21.
20 Harvard Medical Practice Study. Report to the State of New York. Cambridge MA: Harvard Medical School. 1990.
21 Leape LL. Error in medicine. JAMA. 1994; 272(23): 1851-57.
excerpt from:
Suter EA, Waters WC 4th, Murray GB, Hopkins CB, Asiaf J, Moore JB, Fackler M, Cowan DN, Eckenhoff RG, Singer TR, et al.
Violence in America. Effective solutions.
J Med Assoc Ga. 1995 Jun;84(6):253-63. Review.
PMID: 7616135 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
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