A dismissed malpractice lawsuit can still cost privileges

Health Policy
July 26, 2026

A hospital credentialing committee is weighing an application for surgical privileges. Someone on the panel does what any of us would do: They type the surgeon’s name into Google, and because they are being careful, they add one word: “lawsuit.” A malpractice complaint surfaces on the first page. It lays out the allegation in plain language. What the panel does not see, anywhere on that page or the one after …

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A dismissed malpractice lawsuit can still cost privileges

Reduced to a diagnosis: I was the patient in bed 27

Conditions and Diseases
July 26, 2026

The longer I spent in the mental health system, the harder it became to remember who I was outside the pages of my medical record. Because when people stopped referring to me as the young girl I was, and instead as a diagnosis or simply as “the patient in bed 27,” how was I supposed to remember who I was outside those hospital walls? The staff had read through my …

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Reduced to a diagnosis: I was the patient in bed 27

The night septic shock took a patient we fought to save

Conditions and Diseases
July 26, 2026

An excerpt from Blood Poison: The Untold Story of Sepsis.

Eduardo’s blood pressure failed to respond to one fluid bolus, then another, and another. We instructed his nurse, Jenny, to start a vasopressor called dopamine while Alex and I prepared to place a central venous catheter in Eduardo’s internal jugular vein. (Dopamine also increases heart rate and cardiac muscle contractility. Although doctors classify drugs as vasopressors and inotropes, many of …

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The night septic shock took a patient we fought to save

Is it cannabis-induced psychosis or bipolar disorder?

Conditions and Diseases
July 26, 2026

Patient details have been changed and combined where necessary to protect privacy.

This week, I evaluated two young people who had recently been hospitalized after developing psychosis in the setting of heavy cannabis use. Both had been discharged with serious psychiatric diagnoses and multiple medications. Both families were frightened. And in both cases, the central clinical question remained insufficiently answered: Was this the onset of a primary psychiatric disorder, or was …

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Is it cannabis-induced psychosis or bipolar disorder?

Clinical AI tools are losing to general-purpose models

Health Technology
July 26, 2026

Open almost any surgical journal this year and you’ll find a new AI model. A neural network that predicts anastomotic leak. A risk calculator trained on a single institution’s registry. A computer-vision system that labels the phases of a laparoscopic cholecystectomy. A bespoke tool for predicting graft patency, rupture risk, or readmission. Each is presented as a small, hard-won victory where domain experts encode clinical knowledge into a tightly scoped …

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Clinical AI tools are losing to general-purpose models

AI will not replace physician advisors. Volume will.

Health Technology
July 26, 2026

I just came off the stage at NPAC 2026 in Charlotte, where I presented to a room full of physician advisors on practical AI strategies for expanding bandwidth. The questions afterward told me everything I needed to know about where this profession stands right now.

Nobody asked whether AI was coming. They already know it is. They asked something more honest than that: How do we use it without losing the …

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AI will not replace physician advisors. Volume will.

Chronic Ramsay Hunt syndrome doesn’t end with the rash

Conditions and Diseases
July 25, 2026

When most people hear the words “Ramsay Hunt syndrome,” they think of a temporary illness. A rash. A facial droop. Some antivirals. Then recovery. That is the version often described in textbooks.

It is not the version I live with.

Years ago, I developed Ramsay Hunt syndrome. Like many patients, I assumed that with treatment and time I would recover and return to my normal life.

Instead, I entered a world I never …

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Chronic Ramsay Hunt syndrome doesn’t end with the rash

The medical malpractice system rewards delay

Physician
July 25, 2026

Medical malpractice in the United States has evolved into a system plagued by substantial problems. Each year, the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) reports statistics on an average of 13,000 medical malpractice lawsuits that are litigated. However, these are awards against practitioners, which account for one-third of all medical malpractice lawsuits that are litigated. Hence, 40,000 medical malpractice lawsuits are litigated.

Another source, Justpoint, reports that as many as 85,000 medical …

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The medical malpractice system rewards delay

Food allergy stigma and the names on a memorial slide

Conditions and Diseases
July 25, 2026

Recently, while watching Influenced, a satirical film about wealthy influencers and socialites, I heard the words “Food Allergy Ball” as part of a skit. The audience was expected to laugh. I couldn’t. It wasn’t because I lack a sense of humor. It was because those words immediately caused my brain to recall a memorial slide for those who passed at a real Food Allergy Ball.

That wasn’t the only scene that …

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Food allergy stigma and the names on a memorial slide

How clinical alerts deliver a fuller view of patients

Health Technology
July 25, 2026

For more than two decades, admission, discharge, and transfer (ADT) alerts have served as the backbone of automated patient-activity notification in U.S. health care. Designed to give clinicians and care managers a real-time heads-up when patients interact with and move through the health care system, they remain a workhorse of care coordination, and inside the facilities a care team is directly connected to, they often perform exactly as intended.

However, …

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How clinical alerts deliver a fuller view of patients

Resentment in medicine is a leading cause of burnout

Physician
July 25, 2026

My name is Tony Grandelis. I’m an OB/GYN hospitalist, a medical educator, and a person in long-term recovery from substance use disorder. Through my brand Recovering Healthcare, I explore what addiction recovery has taught me about fixing a broken health care system, one principle at a time. Today, I want to talk about resentments, which are, in my opinion, some of the most under-recognized causes of burnout in medicine.

In recovery, …

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Resentment in medicine is a leading cause of burnout

What I wish couples knew before their first IVF cycle

Conditions and Diseases
July 25, 2026

After performing more than 600 IVF cycles a year for nearly two decades, I’ve noticed something that has little to do with embryology and everything to do with expectations. The couples who cope best with this process aren’t necessarily the ones with the best prognosis. They’re the ones who walked in with a realistic picture of what they were about to go through.

I wish more of my colleagues talked about …

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What I wish couples knew before their first IVF cycle

Guilt by association in medicine: My mentor fell, not me

Physician
July 25, 2026

Every physician carries the imprint of their training. Some of those imprints are gifts: a clinical insight, a way of listening, a habit of precision. Others are burdens we never asked for. We inherit not only the wisdom of our mentors, but also their blind spots, their anxieties, and sometimes their failings.

Early in my career, I trained under a mentor who, at the time, was widely admired. He was charismatic, …

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Guilt by association in medicine: My mentor fell, not me

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How AI in health care administration eases burnout

Health Technology
July 25, 2026

When we think of health care innovation, our minds typically gravitate toward clinical breakthroughs: state-of-the-art robotic surgeries, cutting-edge wearables, or novel pharmaceutical treatments. However, one of the most profound transformations in the modern health care sector is happening behind the scenes.

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and automated technologies into health care administration is quietly revolutionizing how facilities operate. By alleviating the massive administrative burden placed on medical professionals, these …

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How AI in health care administration eases burnout

Doctors burn out from a guilt that was never theirs [PODCAST]

Podcast
July 24, 2026
YouTube video

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

You feel guilty for calling in sick, taking earned vacation, or setting a boundary at work. What if that guilt was never really yours? Christie Mulholland is a palliative care physician and certified …

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Doctors burn out from a guilt that was never theirs [PODCAST]

Why Medicare hospice coverage fails the dying

Conditions and Diseases
July 24, 2026

Every day in family meetings across the United States, we clinicians are delivering difficult truth to a family: Their loved one is nearing the end of life, and comfort-focused care is the appropriate (and desired) next step. Goals are aligned. The clinical picture is clear. And then the conversation hits a wall that has nothing to do with the practice or the art of medicine: Our patient cannot go home. …

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Why Medicare hospice coverage fails the dying

Self-insured employer health plans face a new reckoning

Health Policy
July 24, 2026

In 2026, the movement in health care toward accountability has begun. A future press release will mark this year as the crescendo that put transparency on price and fiduciary responsibility back into health care. It starts with self-insured employers who have funded health benefits for their workforce under the latest provisions of ERISA, the Employee Retirement Income and Security Act. At long last, the black box that held the secrets …

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Self-insured employer health plans face a new reckoning

Comorbid mental illness affects 30 million Americans

Conditions and Diseases
July 24, 2026

In patients with chronic disabling physical symptoms, clinicians often overlook an associated mental illness. Why? Patients typically do not offer the psychological symptoms needed to make a diagnosis. Instead, they emphasize physical symptoms and their disability. To make a diagnosis, I’ll review that clinicians need to view severe physical symptoms as a “red flag” for a comorbid mental health problem.

An earlier KevinMD post highlighted that primary care providers lack …

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Comorbid mental illness affects 30 million Americans

Summer seasonal affective disorder hides in plain sight

Conditions and Diseases
July 24, 2026

When most people hear the words seasonal affective disorder, they picture winter. Dark mornings. Short days. Cold weather. Fatigue. Oversleeping. Wanting to stay under the covers. Only wanting to go out for donuts.

But seasonal depression does not always come in winter. For some people, summer is the difficult season. And summer-pattern seasonal affective disorder can look very different from the winter depression most of us recognize. Instead of slowing down, …

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Summer seasonal affective disorder hides in plain sight

Women physicians are leaving. Whose problem is it?

Physician
July 24, 2026

Making the decision to leave clinical practice was a leap off a cliff into thin air when I wasn’t sure I had a place to land. Who was I, what would I do, if I wasn’t a physician? It felt like such a loss; I loved being able to do such deeply meaningful work.

This was back in the dark ages of the late 1990s, before “burnout” was a household word. …

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Women physicians are leaving. Whose problem is it?

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