KevinMD.com

October 24, 2026Oct 24, 2026

On Friday, March 13, 2020, Governor Jim Justice held a press conference, one I watched virtually, and, as I ate cheddar cheese and Triscuits and put my feet on my desk, I felt unwell. The previous weekend had been the last “normal” thing my son, Isaac, would do in high school, the West Virginia All-State High School Band. And by “normal” I mean a superspreader event where my entire family …

The Podcast by KevinMD

Disability claim denied? Your chart notes may be why. [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

October 23, 2026Oct 23, 2026

The words you put in a patient's chart can be used to deny their disability claim. A note that says "stable" or "improved" can mean one thing to you and another to the insurer. Jennifer Hess, an ERISA disability attorney…

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The words you put in a patient’s chart can be used to deny their disability claim. A note that says “stable” or “improved” can mean one thing to you and another to the insurer. Jennifer Hess, an ERISA disability attorney and Riemer Hess partner, represents physicians and other professionals in …

Medical education

Nutrition training for doctors needs more than 40 hours

Bret Scher, MD

October 23, 2026Oct 23, 2026

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently announced an initiative to improve nutrition education across every stage of physician education and training. As part of the effort, dozens of medical schools have pledged to include forty hours of…

Those pledges take aim at a longstanding gap. Medical schools currently devote less than 1 percent of lecture hours to nutrition, …

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Conditions and diseases

Francisco M. Torres, MD, on back pain and evidence-based wellness: a KevinMD subscriber spotlight

Subscriber Spotlight by KevinMD

October 23, 2026Oct 23, 2026

Francisco M. Torres, MD, is an interventional physiatrist who specializes in spine-related pain syndromes at Florida Spine Institute and Wellness in Clearwater, Florida, and is certified by the American Board of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and the American Board of…

…

Health policy

Teen driver insurance protects your child when others crash

Michael L. Saile Jr., Esq

October 23, 2026Oct 23, 2026

As the father of three active boys, including two teenagers approaching driving age, I know the day I hand over the car keys isn't far off. Right now, our days are filled with practices, wrestling meets, school activities, and the…

As the father of three active boys, including two teenagers approaching driving age, I know the day I hand over the car keys isn’t far off. Right now, our days are filled with practices, wrestling meets, school activities, and the constant shuffle of getting everyone where they need to be. Before long, they’ll be the ones behind the wheel, driving themselves to those same activities. Like most parents, I’ll worry …

Physician voices

Leaving clinical practice without leaving medicine

Riya Joshi, MD, PhD, MPH

October 23, 2026Oct 23, 2026

There was a time when my daily work meant sitting across from a patient in an exam room. I listened to symptoms, asked questions, performed physical examinations, ordered laboratory tests, tried to arrive at a diagnosis, and then prescribed medicine. Today, my world looks very different. The person sitting across from me has been replaced by a screen. Instead of examining patients, I examine datasets, clinical trial tables and listings, …

Conditions and diseases

Why cancer metaphors of war and battle fail patients

Aleksandra Filipovic, MD, PhD

October 23, 2026Oct 23, 2026

For decades, we have talked about cancer as a war to be won. Patients are told to fight, to battle, to beat the disease. In oncology, this language is so deeply embedded that we rarely stop to question it. Yet…

Yet words do more than describe our experiences. Alongside medical therapies, they can shape how patients understand their illness, what they expect from treatment, and how they experience care.

After more than twenty …

Health technology

Fax in health care costs hospitals more than they realize

Anita L. Carson, DBA

October 23, 2026Oct 23, 2026

Health care delivery organizations face substantial budgetary pressures. U.S. health care organizations face heavy administrative burdens that consume nearly a quarter of all health care spending, amounting to $950 billion in 2021. Adding to the financial strain, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law in July 2025, will reduce Medicaid spending by at least $700 billion over the next 10 years, with 20 states’ Medicaid budgets …

Health technology

Predictive AI in health care flags risk. Who acts on it?

Dr. Sarima Chinda

October 23, 2026Oct 23, 2026

Artificial intelligence is transforming health care's ability to anticipate disease, identify vulnerable populations, and support clinical decision-making. From predicting hospital readmissions to identifying individuals at increased risk of chronic conditions, AI-powered technologies promise to make health care more proactive, efficient,…

Artificial intelligence is transforming health care’s ability to anticipate disease, identify vulnerable populations, and support clinical decision-making. From predicting hospital readmissions to identifying individuals at increased risk of chronic conditions, AI-powered technologies promise to make health care more proactive, efficient, and responsive. However, while considerable attention has been devoted to improving the accuracy and sophistication of these technologies, a more fundamental question remains insufficiently addressed: What happens after a patient …

Physician voices

What The Hunger Games reveals about moral injury in medicine

Dr. Rida Jawed

October 23, 2026Oct 23, 2026

Shortly after graduating from my emergency medicine training, I reread The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I didn't expect a dystopian novel to follow me into the emergency department, but it did. Somewhere between ambulance radios, a full waiting room,…

Shortly after graduating from my emergency medicine training, I reread The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I didn’t expect a dystopian novel to follow me into the emergency department, but it did. Somewhere between ambulance radios, a full waiting room, and those pages, I realized how familiar the logic felt. Not the violence. The structure.

Both worlds revolve around the same question: What happens when there isn’t enough, and someone has …

The Podcast by KevinMD

Doctors lose hours to admin work that AI or an assistant could do [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

October 22, 2026Oct 22, 2026

Many doctors who run their own practices spend hours on work someone else could do. One practice owner who charges $300 an hour was his own receptionist, verifying insurance all night and stepping away from a family dinner to take…

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Physician voices

Why I wrote a medical thriller about patients’ secrets

Renda K. Knapp, MD

October 22, 2026Oct 22, 2026

The most important moment of a medical appointment usually happens at the very end, with a hand on the doorknob. Every physician knows the moment. The visit is over. The official reason for it (the refill, the checkup, the cough) has been handled. And then, as she reaches for the door, the patient pauses. “Actually, there’s one more thing.”

In thirty years as an OB/GYN, I have learned that the one …

Drugs and prescribing

The exercise pill is back, and history urges caution

Francisco M. Torres, MD

October 22, 2026Oct 22, 2026

I was once the proud owner of a gadget from the early 2000s. A belt you wrapped around your midsection, switched on, and supposedly watched the vibrations melt the fat away. Predictably, it did not work. In fact, it never could have. Still, at the time I wanted it to work so much that, for a moment, I set aside everything I knew as a physician about how muscle and …

Conditions and diseases

Parental instincts caught what normal tests missed

Jayme Higgins, RN

October 22, 2026Oct 22, 2026

As a nurse, I understand why medicine depends on objective data. We rely on lab results, imaging studies, vital signs, and physical examinations to help guide decisions. We are trained to avoid unnecessary testing, unnecessary radiation, and unnecessary interventions. I fully understand the risks of overdiagnosis, radiation exposure, and the reality that many childhood illnesses improve with time and supportive care.

But recently, I learned a lesson from the other side …

Health policy

Health care innovation is more than a new drug or device

Narinder Singh Parhar, MD

October 22, 2026Oct 22, 2026

For many people working in health care, the problems have become painfully familiar: the growing burden of chronic disease, physician and nurse burnout, shortages of adequately trained clinicians, rising costs, and dissatisfaction among patients and professionals alike. Together, these pressures can create a frustrating feeling that we have reached the end of the road. I believe we have reached a point that demands a change in direction.

We have extraordinary scientific …

Conditions and diseases

Misdiagnosed with MS? Why losing the label feels like grief

Kara Wada, MD

October 22, 2026Oct 22, 2026

"Congratulations, you don't have MS." That's what Christina Applegate's doctor told her, five years after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). Newer technology had ruled it out. On her podcast this week, she described how everyone around her was…

“Congratulations, you don’t have MS.”

That’s what Christina Applegate’s doctor told her, five years after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). Newer technology had ruled it out. On her podcast this week, she described how everyone around her was thrilled, and she wasn’t. She still needs a wheelchair to get from the car to the exam room. Nothing magical happened when she heard the news.

I’m not her doctor, and …

Health policy

Why the news ignores injuries to slaughterhouse workers

Martha Rosenberg

October 22, 2026Oct 22, 2026

The public did not hear about the worker walkouts at slaughterhouses in Greeley, Colorado, and Monmouth, Illinois, earlier this year for the same reason it does not hear about worker injuries in general in the plants. Heavy machinery combined with…

Heavy machinery combined with wet floors, sharp knives, and frenzied line speeds makes meat and poultry plants some of the most dangerous workplaces in the U.S. Across industries, an average of 27 …

Physician voices

Outdated medical information needs an expiration date

Dr. Aman Mishra

October 22, 2026Oct 22, 2026

An article can be accurate the day it's published and misleading by the time you read it. Nothing about the text changes. The evidence underneath it does. That's the part search engines and social feeds don't tell you. A page…

An article can be accurate the day it’s published and misleading by the time you read it. Nothing about the text changes. The evidence underneath it does.

That’s the part search engines and social feeds don’t tell you. A page looks current (clean design, working links, top of the search results) while its core recommendation is stale, superseded by a trial, a safety alert, a new diagnostic cutoff, or an updated …

Physician finance

Who handles prior authorization when your biller is out?

Karan Kanwar

October 22, 2026Oct 22, 2026

The payer's portal wants a six-digit code, and the code is on its way to the biller's phone. She's out until Wednesday. A patient stands at the front desk, waiting to hear whether a prior auth went through. A medical…

The payer’s portal wants a six-digit code, and the code is on its way to the biller’s phone. She’s out until Wednesday.

A patient stands at the front desk, waiting to hear whether a prior auth went through. A medical assistant works down the shared password sheet, two years old by now, until the login locks on the third try. The patient leaves without an answer, and the visit stays unbooked.

At …

Physician voices

What health care gets wrong about mid-career physicians

Ben Feldman, MD

October 22, 2026Oct 22, 2026

I'll never forget the moment when I knew I was going to have to make a big transition. After more than a decade of navigating what had become an ongoing tension between work and life, I remember running the numbers…

I’ll never forget the moment when I knew I was going to have to make a big transition. After more than a decade of navigating what had become an ongoing tension between work and life, I remember running the numbers one evening and realizing something had to give. My overhead and schedule pressures became impossible to ignore.

As a private-practice otolaryngologist, I lived and worked in the same community where my …

Real physician voices, twice a week

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