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  Awards Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Ctr. Boston Medical Center Boston University Brigham and Women's Hospital Broad Institute Cambridge Health Alliance Caritas St. Elizabeth's Medical Ctr. Children's Hospital Boston Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Grants Harvard University Joslin Diabetes Center Lahey Clinic Mass. General Hospital Mass. Health Law McLean Hospital MIT New England Baptist Hospital Personnel Moves Public Health Research Short White Coat Tufts-New England Medical Center Tufts University UMass Memorial Medical Center University of Massachusetts VA Medical Centers    A Healthy Blog Running A Hospital Nature Network Boston SciBos - Corie Lok's blog Kevin, M.D. Blog, MD Nurse at small Dr. Gwenn Is In Healthy Children blog WBUR's CommonHealth Other Globe Blogs
Elizabeth Cooney is a health reporter for the Worcester Telegram &
Gazette.
Boston Globe Health and Science staff:
Scott Allen Alice Dembner Carey Goldberg Liz Kowalczyk Stephen Smith Colin Nickerson Beth Daley Karen Weintraub, Deputy Health and Science Editor, and Gideon Gil, Health and Science Editor. Short White Coat blogger Ishani Ganguli Short White Coat blogger Jennifer Srygley  Week of:
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« Teaching doctors to teach patients about lifestyle | Main | On the blogs: life-threatening or not, vaccine costs, calling RNA labs » Tuesday, April 17, 2007Patients can manage their own care better, researchers argueTeaching patients how to monitor and manage their chronic illnesses can not only lower costs but improve quality of care, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and MIT say. In an essay in this week's Public Library of Science Medicine, Harold J. DeMonaco of MGH and Eric von Hippel of MIT review the medical literature on self-management tools for type 1 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart failure, depression and asthma. They ask why the methods patients use to take care of their own diabetes -- monitoring blood sugar, injecting insulin, evaluating how well they are doing and adjusting dosage -- can't be expanded to other conditions. In one study they cite, patients with hypertension successfully used home monitors to lower their blood pressure and stay on their medications. "We propose that the time has come for health systems to support appropriate and appropriately timed shifts from practitioner-based care to patient self-management," they write. Can this work? Let White Coat Notes know what you think at whitecoat@globe.com Posted by Elizabeth Cooney at 10:08 AM
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