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MetaMed: Crackpot medicine?

I don't see why. I've read that 85% of doctors don't get Bayes theorem right, and paying more money to get access to doctors who know their statistics doesn't seem all that strange to me. I would certainly consider it, if I had the money and a serious health issue that regular doctors told me couldn't be solved. And honestly, the 1% thing seems an exaggeration, since 400 dollars per hour really isn't all that much when dealing with serious health issues.
 
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Sophronius said:
I don't see why. I've read that 85% of doctors don't get Bayes theorem right, and paying more money to get access to doctors who know their statistics doesn't seem all that strange to me. I would certainly consider it, if I had the money and a serious health issue that regular doctors told me couldn't be solved. And honestly, the 1% thing seems an exaggeration, since 400 dollars per hour really isn't all that much when dealing with serious health issues.
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The problem is that "more expensive" doesn't equate "better care". My brother's fiance is seeing a very expensive specialist right now for a condition that I also have. In exchange for her $400 a visit, she is receiving the exact same advice that I got from a primary care physician 15 years ago, for $60 a visit. I can't seem to convince them that they could get the same level of care for less money though :( They both swear by this guy, and the more they tell me about him the less ethical I think he is.
 
You are right that more expensive care isn't necessarily better, but having people who claim to provide better service charge more surely isn't suspicious?

Maybe the issue is that the guy is the former president of the singularity institute? I guess I can see why some people would find that suspicious, if they already considered the technological singularity as crackpot science...
 
The article makes no mention of Bayes theorem. It seems to implying that you're paying for more time with the doctor and a more detailed diagnosis. we are told,
”We try to figure out what the global opinion is and not just take the dominant literature position,” said Vassar.
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I'm not sure what this means, but it must be something since people are paying for it.

It just appears to be re-packing of medical services that are already available to sophisticated shoppers.
 
Stomatopoda said:
True, but there's a difference between overpriced and crackpot.
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This is also very true! Thank you for pointing that out. A heart specialist may charge a lot of money, but his or her treatments are definitely based on science, not crackpot, new-age medicine.

I find that there's a correlation between people who have illnesses with unknown causes like fibromyalgia, or potentially fatal diseases like cancer, and paying for treatments that are both overpriced and crackpot.

The doctor I was referring to earlier is a fibromyalgia doctor of the overpriced crackpot type. This doctor had the gall to ask for a copy of my brother's health insurance policy in order to code certain treatments that usually aren't covered, such as acupuncture, so that he could get the insurance company to pay for them anyway. My brother isn't much of a critical thinker, I'm afraid; he saw this as a positive thing and an attempt to save him some money, rather than the fraud that it really is. Anyway, I hope my sister-in-law's "chi" gets better :mad:
 
This seems like a continuing trend to what I'm seeing in the health care industry.
Some doctors are moving over to a 'concierge' practice. It's premium service where they accept no insurance and everything thing is out of pocket for the patient.
In return they get anytime/24hr access to their provider, any diagnostic test they want, genetic profiling and a custom lifetime health care plan.
I've seen it termed Executive Health Care or Elite Wellness.
 
Tony99 said:
This seems like a continuing trend to what I'm seeing in the health care industry.
Some doctors are moving over to a 'concierge' practice. It's premium service where they accept no insurance and everything thing is out of pocket for the patient.
In return they get anytime/24hr access to their provider, any diagnostic test they want, genetic profiling and a custom lifetime health care plan.
I've seen it termed Executive Health Care or Elite Wellness.
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It sounds like more of a research service than a concierge practice. From the article.

MetaMed also works directly with patients who are suffering from a chronic condition like migraines, Lyme Disease, or even cancer. They receive varying treatment options from doctors, so turn to MetaMed for a concrete answer. ”We try to figure out what the global opinion is and not just take the dominant literature position,” said Vassar.

For about $400 per hour for a doctor and $200 per hour for a senior researcher, patients will receive an in-depth report and a medical consultation to discuss the results. It’s not dissimilar from ultra high-end company Private Health Management, dubbed by the Wall Street Journal as the “doctor to the 1 percent.”
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This sounds good, but the quality of the doctors doing the research is key. After all, anyone can hire a grad student in the sciences to do literature reviews for him for much less.

I know of a wealthy couple who, similar to Steve Jobs, hired hiring several top doctors to do research on the best therapies for the wife's rare cancer. She had been given a year to live. It's unclear whether the couple poured money into studies the doctors were already conducting or whether the doctors simply conducted meta analyses. Either way, her cancer went into remission and she's still cancer-free 10-15 years later.

(Of course, the cancer might have gone into remission as a result of older therapies that were available to anyone, but I think she had tried those therapies at the beginning and found them ineffective.)
 
FluffyPersian said:
It sounds like more of a research service than a concierge practice. From the article.



This sounds good, but the quality of the doctors doing the research is key. After all, anyone can hire a grad student in the sciences to do literature reviews for him for much less.

I know of a wealthy couple who, similar to Steve Jobs, hired hiring several top doctors to do research on the best therapies for the wife's rare cancer. She had been given a year to live. It's unclear whether the couple poured money into studies the doctors were already conducting or whether the doctors simply conducted meta analyses. Either way, her cancer went into remission and she's still cancer-free 10-15 years later.

(Of course, the cancer might have gone into remission as a result of older therapies that were available to anyone, but I think she had tried those therapies at the beginning and found them ineffective.)
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Thank you for pointing out this paragraph from the article:
MetaMed also works directly with patients who are suffering from a chronic condition like migraines, Lyme Disease, or even cancer. (note: one of these things is not like the others) They receive varying treatment options from doctors, so turn to MetaMed for a concrete answer. ”We try to figure out what the global opinion is and not just take the dominant literature position,” said Vassar.
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I'm not sure how I missed this key paragraph---maybe it was the sticker shock :D This paragraph indicates that MetaMed is more than just a medical concierge service like the one used by the wealthy couple you described---this is where the crackpot medicine and quackery come into the picture.

Chronic Lyme disease is an extremely controversial diagnosis. There's no doubt that Lyme disease exists (that is well-established) and that if it's left untreated it can cause serious health problems. However, there are multiple studies that show that Lyme disease does not lie dormant in the body after a traditional course of antibiotics or cause a remission/flareup type of cycle. There are also studies that show that long-term antibiotic treatment (the recommended treatment for "chronic" Lyme disease) has no effect on one of the most commonly cited symptoms of "chronic" Lyme disease, memory impairment. There is a very well-researched article about the Lyme disease controversy, complete with references and citations, here:

http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/chronic-lyme-disease-myth-science/

PLEASE NOTE: I am not trying to say that sufferers of chronic Lyme disease are hypochondriacs, liars, or deluded. I am saying that they're most likely misdiagnosed or have been re-infected with Lyme disease by a different tick bite. There is no doubt in my mind that people who have been diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease really are ill.

The other problem with MetaMed's statement is the second highlighted portion. What does "global opinion" mean, and what is the "dominant literature position" from a medical standpoint? I take "global opinion" to mean "illnesses that people believe that they have without any medical evidence to show that the illness exists" and the "dominant literature position" means "medical studies that show that no such illness exists, or the popularly suggested treatment for the illness doesn't work". That single sentence says to me that MetaMed would be willing to treat you for Morgellons or give you a preventative treatment for Korean Fan Death* provided that you come up with enough money.

*I imagine that a cpap machine might work quite well as a "preventative measure" for fan death. Sleep studies are quite expensive, and normal results could be used to reaffirm the patient's belief that the fan is the cause of all their woes. In addition, MetaMed could make a bundle renting or selling the equipment and all the accessories to their victims patients.
 
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Apology said:
The other problem with MetaMed's statement is the second highlighted portion. What does "global opinion" mean, and what is the "dominant literature position" from a medical standpoint? I take "global opinion" to mean "illnesses that people believe that they have without any medical evidence to show that the illness exists" and the "dominant literature position" means "medical studies that show that no such illness exists, or the popularly suggested treatment for the illness doesn't work". That single sentence says to me that MetaMed would be willing to treat you for Morgellons or give you a preventative treatment for Korean Fan Death* provided that you come up with enough money.
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It's unclear what they mean by "global opinion," but I assumed that it it refers to a summary of either doctors' beliefs about the relative effectiveness of different therapies for a condition.

I'd guess that people typically hire them to research conditions that are either fatal; chronic but haven't responded to first- or second-line therapies (headaches); or developmental problems (like autism) for which there is disagreement over the effectiveness of different therapies.
 
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