California's Premier Health and Technology
Executive Membership Organization
For over 25 years, California's Technology and Health Executives have
relied on ABL's CEO Round Tables, through its peer advisory-board
approach, to accelerate their corporate and professional growth and help
them build great companies. In monthly, confidential Advisory
Board sessions, Members share and gain feedback on their most pressing
concerns.
In each
Vertical Industry Round Table, the Members are able to harness the
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INSIGHT: Mimi Grant's blog
Fewer Mammograms
and Paps: Thank You
Given the ruckus
surrounding the recent announcement that women under age 50 (unless
there's a family history or other mitigating circumstance/s) don't
need to have a mammogram until they've reached that august point in
life -- and then only every other year, you'd think the
U.S.
Preventive Services Task Force
was subjecting all of us to a death sentence -- without the benefit of a
panel. The great news is: in an emerging era of "outcomes-based
clinical decision making," "guidelines," and "transparency," this
should be considered a "win" for most of us female types: we'll now be
exposed to less than half the radiation, we'll experience fewer false
positives (a truly nerve-racking experience) that result in even more
scans and sometimes "just in case" biopsies, let alone fewer times
with our poor breasts squished between the plates of a "cold waffle
iron." (Trust me, if men had to subject their private parts to this
form of medieval torture on an annual basis, either they just wouldn't
do it, or they'd have devised a kinder, gentler way to do it years
ago!)
Same story for pap smears -- another really unpleasant procedure. It
used to be, I've been told by a pathologist and a cytologist (who
reads paps for a living), that it was hard to read the purple-goo-smeared
slides from which the pap was read. "Results" were often best
guesses, so you'd want to have an annual pap, just to increase your
chances that this time they got a better read, and could write
"negative" more affirmatively. But with today's newer technology,
like ThinPrep and ClearPrep, cytologists can get a much cleaner read,
and given that cervical cancers tend to be slower growing than many
other types, every-other-year-paps should be just fine.
The fact is, today we must be more proactive in managing and
monitoring our bodies' health. If anything looks or feels suspicious,
we need to go into -- or at least email -- our physicians. (The only
friend I've lost to cervical cancer was in her 40s and hadn't had a
pap for about five years.) Instead of looking at these new guidelines
as "take-aways," we should be saying "hooray!" and be ever-more
mindful that we are our bodies' keepers, and we need to be diligent
about keeping them in shape -- inside and out.
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NEWS & ARTICLES:
Highlights from our bi-weekly
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MEMBER NEWS - HEADLINES
Welcome New Member!
Peter Goldbach, MD, Med-Vantage, Inc.
ABL Members included in
U.S. News & World Report's "America's
Best Health Plans"
Business Insurance Magazine Awards United, Gallagher,
CIGNA
Satellite
Opens 3 New Dialysis Centers
MHA's Augsburger Describes How to Create a Successful Wellness
Program
GSK: FDA OKs Pandemic H1N1 Vaccine
El Camino's
State-of-the-Art Hospital Open for Patient Care
DWT Discusses CMS' Expectations for Supervision of Hospital
Outpatient Departments
Data Distributing's
DISCO-Digital Chosen by VA Hospital
CMS: Medicare Paid $92+ Million in Physician Incentives for 2008
CIGNA Co-Launches Comprehensive Healthcare Product in China
Aperio Awarded Patent
for Client/Server Image Analysis
A-Life Medical Launches New Web Site
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