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The hidden math behind physician hiring costs and recruitment

Physician

March 18, 2026

Most physicians know what they earn. Far fewer know what it costs to hire them or replace them. A colleague once told me in frustration, “It takes me two years to get my money back on a new hire.” I understood the frustration, but not the math. I thought of hiring the way many physicians do: salary, benefits, maybe a signing bonus. It seemed straightforward. It is not. Hiring a …

Primary care compensation models: Why wRVUs are obsolete

Yul Ejnes, MD

Physician

March 18, 2026

It is time to dethrone the office visit as the king of primary care physician compensation and how the work of a primary care physician is defined.

Several months ago, a reporter asked me how many patients I see in a typical day. I told her that the question should not be how many patients I see each day, but how many patients I take care of each day, a number …

Shift from universal to optional vaccination risks normalizing preventable disease [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

March 17, 2026

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

Medical student Umayr R. Shaikh discusses his article “The impact of CDC’s new childhood immunization guidance.” Umayr argues that recent CDC changes, moving vaccines like flu, Hep B, and meningococcal from universal …

Why physicians are absorbing risk, not leading

Gus W. Krucke, MD

Physician

March 17, 2026

Physicians are often described as leaders of the health care team. The language shifts, quarterback, captain, final decision-maker, but the implication is constant: someone is clearly in charge. At the bedside, the reality feels more complicated.

In every functioning system, there is a final point of responsibility, the person who answers when outcomes are poor. In medicine, that person remains the physician. We sign the charts. We carry the malpractice risk. …

The Schism of Time: Bridging the generational gap in the workplace

Seleipiri Akobo, MD, MPH, MBA

Physician

March 17, 2026

In our modern professional landscape, we are witnessing a phenomenon I call the Schism of Time. It is not just a gap in age; it is a fundamental difference in how we perceive value, and “spend” the hours of our lives.

As technology accelerates, the cadence of our work shifts. We see a friction between the “Deep Time” often championed by seasoned leaders, rooted in legacy, patience, and incremental growth, and …

What Match Day teaches us about unexpected life paths

Kathleen Muldoon, PhD

Education

March 17, 2026

There are moments in life when everything you imagined for yourself fits inside a single envelope. This week, every fourth-year medical student in the United States will open the same one at the same moment. Some people scream. Some people cry. And a few people quietly realize their life just went somewhere they never planned to go. Match Day is the moment medical students learn where their futures begin. Last …

The biological cost of night-shift work on circadian rhythms

Chinyelu E. Oraedu, MD

Conditions

March 17, 2026

“Try not to work the night shift if you can.” Many physicians have said this to patients. Some have said it to colleagues. Often, we say it because we understand the science: Working through the night comes at a physiologic cost. Night-shift work is associated with weight gain, chronic fatigue, disrupted sleep, insulin resistance, and increased long-term risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. Circadian disruption affects …

Chronic pain management: Balancing relief and regulation

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

Physician

March 17, 2026

As a pain physician with over 20 years of experience treating patients with chronic pain, I hear the same plea almost every day: “Doctor, it hurts, please help.”

As an author and patient advocate, I wanted to verbalize the daily reality of chronic pain.

Chronic pain affects an estimated 24.3 percent of U.S. adults (approximately 60 million people) as of 2023, with 8.5 percent (about 21 million) experiencing high-impact chronic pain that …

Why modern medicine feels more like a bureaucracy than a profession

Jeffrey Junig, MD, PhD

Physician

March 17, 2026

I walked through a beautiful hallway the other day, the kind hospitals and clinics seem to favor now, polished floors, warm lighting, and old oak paneling on the walls. It looked less like a medical building and more like the lobby of a boutique hotel. At the end of the hallway sat a receptionist who was having a bad day. Or maybe she was just doing her job. She glanced …

AI agents in health care: What they say when we aren’t listening

Alp Köksal

Tech

March 17, 2026

When artificial intelligence systems talk to us, we tend to focus on what they can do for patients, clinicians, and the health care system. But what happens when they start talking to each other about us?

Earlier this year, a new platform called Moltbook, essentially Reddit for AI agents, launched with hundreds of thousands of autonomous “moltbots” posting (on any topic), debating, and upvoting without any human participation. The platform has …

Huntington’s disease gene therapy: FDA reversal delays AMT-130

Meghan Johnston, MPH

Meds

March 17, 2026

At the end of September 2025, a gene therapy company released results from a clinical trial showing that a breakthrough procedure reduced the progression of Huntington’s symptoms by 75 percent over three years. Researchers collected data from 12 participants who received the therapy and compared the data with two types of control groups.

The company’s drug, AMT-130, shows unprecedented outcomes, so why is the FDA slowing …

Emergency nurses struggle to turn off survival mode after the pandemic [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

March 16, 2026

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

Retired emergency department nurse Amy Dinaburg discusses her article “Lowercase PTSD: Why emergency staff are still hypervigilant.” Amy reflects on the relentless pressure of the COVID-19 pandemic where nurses were forced to …

Why perfectionism in medicine leads to moral injury

Farid Sabet-Sharghi, MD

Conditions

March 16, 2026

In the hallowed halls of medical school, we are often screened for traits that make the “ideal doctor”: high empathy, meticulous perfectionism, and a profound sense of duty. We are the fixers, the ones who find deep meaning in the intersubjective space between healer and patient. Yet, there is a shadow side to this personality architecture that no one talks about, an underlying proclivity toward rejection sensitivity.

The very traits that …

Adult disability care transition: Why medicine must grow up

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

Conditions

March 16, 2026

“Let’s Fly.” Captain Burnham’s words on the USS Discovery were more than a command. They were a declaration of trust, of forward motion, of refusing paralysis.

That is the question before us now: What happens when children with disabilities grow up?

For decades, pediatrics treated disability as a childhood condition. The grant language, the fellowship training, the systems of care, all built on the assumption that disability ends at eighteen. But children …

The hidden risks and rewards of AI scribes in medicine

Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA

Tech

March 16, 2026

For decades physicians have dreamed of a simple technological solution to one of modern medicine’s most corrosive burdens: documentation. The electronic health record promised efficiency but delivered something quite different: extra burden. Physicians now spend hours each evening completing notes, clicking boxes, and reconciling fields, what has become known as “pajama time.” The keyboard has often replaced eye contact. The screen has displaced the patient. Ambient AI scribes arrived with …

How the microvasculature drives the human aging process

Kenneth Ro, MD

Conditions

March 16, 2026

For years we have searched for the causes of aging inside the cell. Researchers study mitochondrial dysfunction, DNA damage, and the accumulation of senescent cells. But the real bottleneck in aging may not lie inside the cell at all. It may lie in the system that keeps those cells alive. During my years working in emergency medicine, I often saw patients whose blocked coronary arteries had been successfully opened during …

Herniated disc recovery: a physician’s personal journey

Eric Dessner, MD

Conditions

March 16, 2026

Anyone that has suffered a herniated disc knows that the road to recovery can feel like a spiritual journey. The searing pain can be so extreme that it leads us to prayer. We may even question the very design of the human body. Why would an all-powerful, wholly good Creator of the Universe endow man with the capacity to experience so much agony? To fear the electric jolt caused by …

The hidden curriculum: What medical school does not teach you

Vance Lehman, MD

Education

March 16, 2026

In medical school, we only learn a fraction of what we need to know to succeed as doctors. The rest, we learn serendipitously through role modeling, trial and error, and other venues. Without luck, however, we may not learn these factors at all. It turns out that unspoken forces, the so-called “hidden curriculum,” may have a greater impact on our personal and professional outcomes than most people realize. As educators …

Diabetic foot complications prevention: Stopping amputation before it starts

Wendy Kang

Conditions

March 16, 2026

Since 2023, while volunteering at an amputee sports competition in Los Angeles, I encountered athletes whose amputations resulted from complications of diabetes. In many cases, limb loss did not begin with a catastrophic injury, but with gaps in preventive care that allowed small, manageable wounds to progress into irreversible outcomes.

Participants traveled long distances to attend the competition, seeking peer support and health information that was often unavailable in their home …

The physiology of heartbreak: hormones, ischemia, and healing

Sara Police, PhD

Conditions

March 16, 2026

As a nutritional scientist and educator, I spend a lot of time thinking about the heart through a lens of physiology, metabolism, and medicine. I aim to reduce risk for cardiovascular disease by sharing evidence-based nutritional strategies. As a human, I realize an equally dangerous health risk can begin in one’s emotional heart. We are hardwired for connection. In this regard, the heart seems simultaneously the strongest and most fragile …

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