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How Medicare reimbursement hurts independent physicians

Policy

May 21, 2026

Independent physicians, particularly in rural communities, have spent years navigating a steady stream of financial cuts, rising costs, and policy instability. Over time, these pressures have forced difficult decisions: scaling back services, reducing staff, and in too many cases, closing care centers altogether.

While there has been modest, temporary relief through adjustments in the Physician Fee Schedule (PFS), it has not been enough to reverse the broader trend. Many practices remain …

Medicare physician pay has fallen 33 percent since 2001

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

Policy

May 21, 2026

Patient care is getting squeezed. For years now, the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule has failed to give doctors the resources they need to keep up with rising costs and deliver high-quality care. The result is real strain on practices, especially smaller and independent ones, and growing risks for patients who rely on Medicare.

When you adjust for inflation, Medicare payment rates to physicians have dropped by about 33 percent …

How physician burnout impacts modern health care

Khai Ling Tan, MD

Physician

May 21, 2026

My daughter had been home sick for three days. Not the kind of sick that keeps you in bed, but the kind that lingers just enough to keep you home, well enough to be bored. She was restless, observant, and thinking. She is 10.

Her dad stayed home with her the first day. I took the second. By the third day, I went back to work. I arranged my schedule so …

Precision psychiatry is finally catching up to medicine

Carrie Friedman, NP

Conditions

May 21, 2026

One of the hardest parts of practicing psychiatry is that we still cannot reliably predict which medication will work for which patient.

A patient comes in struggling with depression. We choose a medication based on symptoms, history, side effect profile, family history, clinical experience, and sometimes educated guesswork. Then we wait. Sometimes the medication helps quickly. Sometimes it causes side effects. Sometimes nothing happens at all. Then we adjust, augment, switch, …

How psychological safety reduces clinician burnout

Nicholas Testa, MD

Physician

May 21, 2026

Burnout among nurses and clinicians has been a prominent topic over the past decade. The combination of regulatory requirements, higher patient demands, and leaner budgets in the shadow of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has fueled the embers that have allowed this crisis of clinician burnout to smolder.

Simultaneously, health care systems are striving to deliver better clinical results in a world where transparency in data and public reporting is the expectation. …

Physicians belong in health care venture capital

Harsha Moole, MD

Finance

May 21, 2026

I graduated residency with over 100 peer-reviewed publications, an EB-1A visa for extraordinary ability in medicine, and zero understanding of how health care capital works.

Nobody taught me what a term sheet was. Nobody explained how venture capital flowed into the companies building the devices, drugs, and software I used on patients every day. Nobody mentioned that the same analytical rigor I applied to systematic reviews, defining a question, evaluating evidence, …

15 financial advisor questions for medical professionals

Rob Natale, AIFA

Finance

May 21, 2026

Before treating a patient, you review their history, run diagnostics, and verify every detail. Have you done the same before trusting your financial advisor with your wealth?

Most medical professionals do not know if their advisor is truly acting in their best interest, or what they are really paying in fees, conflicts of interest, and hidden incentives.

I spent years working with financial advisors managing $20 million to more than $3 billion …

How medical residents build patient trust today

Sarah Whaley

Conditions

May 20, 2026

Spend enough time in a hospital, and patterns start to emerge. Not the clinical kind, the human kind. During my daughter’s recent hospitalization, residents rotated in and out every 12 hours. Over time, I found myself paying attention in a different way. Not with the intent to evaluate, but with a kind of quiet curiosity about how different people showed up in the same role, under the same conditions. It …

How to improve protein absorption after gastric bypass

Kevin Huffman, DO

Conditions

May 20, 2026

I have spent over two decades treating bariatric patients, and one of the most frustrating clinical situations I encounter is this: A patient sitting across from me who has done everything right. They are hitting 75 grams of protein a day. They are tracking every gram. They are bringing their food logs to every appointment. And they are still losing hair, losing muscle, and showing up with low labs.

In my …

How civic engagement empowers health care workers

Stella Safo, MD, MPH

Physician

May 20, 2026

For much of my career, I understood my responsibility in familiar terms: care for the patient in front of me, advocate for better health systems, and teach the next generation of trainees. I still believe that. But I now believe something else just as strongly: If we are serious about health, we cannot stop at the clinic door. We also have to show up in civic life and in the …

Why physicians miss business owner stress in patients

Timothy Lesaca, MD

Physician

May 20, 2026

The ECG was normal. The troponin was negative. The stress test was reassuring. Yet the patient in front of you looked as if he had been living under siege for months.

He was not sleeping. His blood pressure had worsened, despite medication adherence. He described chest tightness, reflux, headaches, irritability, and difficulty concentrating. He woke most nights around 3 a.m., his heart beating fast, checking an account balance, and then lay …

Artificial intelligence disrupts health care delivery

George F. Smith, MD

Tech

May 20, 2026

About half of the primary care visits I see these days involve patients that have consulted ChatGPT and have “an answer” to their medical symptoms that I need to debate, but that is just the beginning of what is coming to engulf all of health care in the near future. Working part-time for an Amazon One Medical clinic in Silicon Valley, I am seeing the rollout of artificial intelligence (AI) …

Why your physician guilt may not actually be yours

Christie Mulholland, MD

Physician

May 20, 2026

I was doing the dishes recently when I was hit with a stomach-dropping sensation and an unprompted memory. A negotiation I’d had years ago with my department. I had secured fair compensation for work they needed done, using the leverage I had. I walked away feeling good about it. And yet, standing at the sink with my guard down, years later, I felt a flash of guilt so unexpected it …

Medical education needs diversity and true excellence

Aba Black, MD, MHS

Education

May 20, 2026

The momentous annual occasion known as Match Day was recently upon us. Thousands of medical students across the country opened envelopes that revealed their academic destiny for the next several years. What medical students learn during several intense years of study and practical application has evolved over time, with increased recognition that biomedical knowledge is necessary but not sufficient to develop humanistic, person-centered physicians. Noticeably missing from the curriculum, however, …

The exam question OB/GYNs were never taught to ask

Michael Reed, MD

Conditions

May 20, 2026

Something is happening in women’s health care. Perimenopause is finally being discussed openly. Vaginal estradiol has entered mainstream conversation. Testosterone therapy for women is no longer confined to niche clinics or whispered discussions. Across medicine and social media alike, women are asking new questions about tissue health, sexual function, intimacy, discomfort, sensation, and quality of life. And perhaps more importantly, they are no longer accepting silence as an answer.

These conversations …

Social media addiction rulings impact mental health

Oliver Power

Conditions

May 20, 2026

Recently, a California jury found the tech giants Meta and Google guilty for the depression and anxiety which ensued in a young woman following her compulsive use of social media. The court found the corporations liable for features that cause children to become addicted to the platforms and that it results in the aforementioned mental health distress. Many are calling this ruling social media’s tobacco moment, citing parallels …

When what’s in the envelope doesn’t match what you expected [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

May 19, 2026

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!

What happens when you match into a residency but it still feels like a loss? Kathleen Muldoon is a coach and medical educator with 20 years of experience partnering with medical students through …

How fecal incontinence impacts infection prevention today

Deanna Vargo, RN, Karen Lou Kennedy-Evans, RN, APRN, and Simone Hugar

Conditions

May 19, 2026

Health care-associated infections (HAIs), including Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI), Candida auris, and multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs), persist as significant challenges for U.S. hospitals despite advancements in infection management, environmental cleaning, and isolation protocols. These infections pose a huge threat to patients and health care staff. But at the bedside, there is one persistent issue that seems more overwhelming and messier than other protocols dealing with fecal incontinence in critically ill patients …

How citation metrics reshape modern academic medicine

Rao M. Uppu, PhD

Conditions

May 19, 2026

I sometimes find myself reflecting when my well-cited journal articles begin to show a decline, whether gradual or sudden. In academic medicine, citations have become a form of currency, used not only to trace ideas but also to measure worth. Yet what gets cited is not always what matters most. In biomedical research, citations support arguments and help measure impact. In principle, they show how knowledge develops over time. In …

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