Conditions and Diseases

Patients pay when Medicare care coordination codes go unused

May 6, 2026

In my years as an ICU nurse, I learned to recognize a pattern. The patients I cared for in trauma surgical intensive care often arrived after a cascade of preventable events. A missed medication. A symptom that went unaddressed. A follow-up appointment that never happened. By the time they reached my unit, the question was no longer how to keep them well at home. It was how to bring them …

Why tickborne co-infections are changing Lyme disease care

Melvin Sanicas, MD

Conditions and Diseases

May 5, 2026

Tickborne diseases are the most common vector-borne infections in the U.S., and for decades Lyme disease has dominated the conversation in endemic regions. But ticks are carrying more than Lyme alone and co-infections are becoming harder to ignore. New research suggests ticks are harboring a wider mix of pathogens than previously recognized, and that co-infections are becoming an increasingly important part of the clinical picture.

A recent study published in Ecosphere …

Why systemic endometriosis requires whole-body care

Christine N. Metz, PhD

Conditions and Diseases

May 5, 2026

There have been unanswered questions about endometriosis for as long as it has been identified as a medical condition. We do not know yet why an estimated one in 10 women of reproductive age worldwide develop this often painful, chronic condition while others do not. We do not have a single, successful non-surgical treatment for endometriosis, characterized by lesions that mimic the tissue of the endometrial lining of …

How workers compensation reform can cut litigation costs

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

Conditions and Diseases

May 5, 2026

As a pain physician treating injured workers daily as well as being a qualified medical examiner (QME) or Independent Medical Examiner (IME) providing independent opinions, and a business owner cutting checks for workers’ comp premiums, I see the system’s strengths and serious strains up close. It started with good intentions: a no-fault safety net, so workers get care and some income if they’re hurt on the job, without dragging employers …

How medical misinformation drives demand for nonscientific treatments

M. Bennet Broner, PhD

Conditions and Diseases

May 5, 2026

Not long ago, when the president announced that Tylenol caused autism, he commented that leucovorin, a cancer medication, treated the condition. It was disturbing to see the outsized impact the pronouncements of a nonscientist had on the public, despite counterstatements by autism scientists to the contrary. I can fully understand the response. What mother-to-be would take the chance, even if untrue, that Tylenol may cause autism? Or if parents have …

Treating adolescent opioid use disorder with buprenorphine

Chris Buresh, MD, MPH

Conditions and Diseases

May 5, 2026

I recently reviewed the case of a 17-year-old who came into the emergency department (ED) after a friend found him unresponsive at a party. He had taken what he thought was a Percocet. It was fentanyl. He survived because his friend called 911 and paramedics arrived with naloxone in time. But here is what happened next: nothing. He was observed, medically cleared, and discharged. No one offered him naloxone to …

How GLP-1 medications shift modern weight-loss trends

Tom Lavin, MD

Conditions and Diseases

May 5, 2026

Weight loss culture is shifting again. In recent years, the dominant aesthetic ideal emphasized curves and the “Kardashian-curve” look popularized across social media. Today, the pendulum is swinging back toward a thinner body ideal that resembles trends from the early 2000s. At the same time, the use of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) medications has surged, particularly among young adults. These two developments are unfolding simultaneously. As medications that support weight loss …

The silent burden in health care and administrative waste

Donna Harvin‑Graham, MBA

Conditions and Diseases

May 4, 2026

In every operational environment I have worked in, labor is visible. It is assigned, measured, and supported. Health care is the only sector where the system routinely generates work it does not staff, does not track, and does not claim. Instead, that work is absorbed by patients, clinicians, and caregivers who carry it because the alternative is delay or failure. This quiet transfer of labor is what I call the …

Why neurodivergent friendship is challenging but possible

Caroline Maguire, MEd

Conditions and Diseases

May 4, 2026

An excerpt from Friendship Skills for Neurodivergent Adults: A Guide for the Anxious, Uniquely Wired, and Easily Distracted.

Your neurology, your experiences, your strengths, and your weaknesses affect how you see the world. Understanding your brain helps you understand your life, your mindset, and the science behind your behavior, so that is exactly where we will begin. By understanding your neurotype, you can better understand your brain and create neurodivergent-friendly …

Caring for the caregivers builds dementia-friendly cities

Gerald Kuo

Conditions and Diseases

May 4, 2026

A school bell rings inside the Jen Chi station-front building, a historic health and social welfare hub in Taipei.

For a visitor, it may sound ordinary. For staff, it marks the end of another class, another session, another carefully planned activity for older adults. For family caregivers, it may mean a short moment of relief. For a person living with dementia, the sound may not become a lasting memory, but it …

Medical expert witness report language gets cases struck

Tracy Liberatore, Esq, PA

Conditions and Diseases

May 4, 2026

If you think one word inside a medical expert report cannot break a case, look at what happened in Kline v. Zimmer. A defense expert testified about possible alternative causes of a plaintiff’s injury, not probable ones. That single word, possibly, is the reason opinions like his are routinely challenged. Across multiple jurisdictions, courts have held that an expert who testifies in possibilities is offering no evidence at all.

In civil …

How minor injuries lead to flesh-eating bacteria in rural Nigeria

Dr. Mansur Auwal Sani

Conditions and Diseases

May 4, 2026

It started with a tiny scratch. A man tending his farm had pricked his finger on a thorn. He shrugged it off. Days later, he returned to the clinic with a fever, swelling, and excruciating pain in his arm. Within hours, the flesh on his hand and forearm was dying, a necrotizing infection, a flesh-eating bacteria taking hold. I have seen this story more times than I care to count …

Rethinking blood thinners for atrial fibrillation patients

Saurabh Gupta, MD

Conditions and Diseases

May 3, 2026

At the American College of Cardiology meeting, a new trial was shared that might change how we view one of the world’s most common heart conditions. At its core, the study asked a simple but disruptive question: Do patients with atrial fibrillation really need to take blood thinners for the rest of their lives to prevent stroke? For decades, the answer has been yes. This trial suggests the answer …

The evolving structural challenges of modern pain medicine

Dharam Persaud-Sharma, MD, PhD

Conditions and Diseases

May 2, 2026

Pain medicine has expanded rapidly in both scope and technical complexity over the past two decades. At the same time, uncertainty surrounding fellowship recruitment, workforce stability, and long-term career sustainability has become more visible. While pain medicine is often described as an evolving interdisciplinary specialty, current trends suggest a broader structural question: whether the systems supporting training, research, and workforce development are evolving at the same pace as the therapies …

National Hospital Week reveals what care really takes

Brian Sutter

Conditions and Diseases

May 2, 2026

Shift change is one of the most critical windows in any hospital. It depends on teams staying tightly aligned across dozens of moving parts.

A respiratory therapist tweaks a ventilator seconds before a desaturation alarm triggers. Down the hall, a transporter clears a bottleneck to move a patient upstairs. At 3:00 a.m., a lab flags a subtle shift in bloodwork, changing the care plan before a crisis could unfold.

From the outside, …

The memory of water and a historic scientific controversy

Rao M. Uppu, PhD

Conditions and Diseases

May 1, 2026

In 1988, an unusual scene unfolded at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research Unit 200 in Clamart, France. The then editor of Nature, John Maddox, arrived at Jacques Benveniste’s laboratory accompanied by investigator Walter Stewart and the professional magician and skeptic James Randi. Their task was not to perform tricks but to examine an extraordinary scientific claim: that biological activity might persist even when no molecules of …

Why nursing home regulations must address mental illness

Amanda M. Buster and J. Wesley Boyd, MD, PhD

Conditions and Diseases

May 1, 2026

Frederick Smith is in his 70s, has advanced Alzheimer’s disease, and lives in a nursing home just south of Boston. He has not had a meal in three days because his roommate is stealing his food and no one has stopped it, either because staff have not noticed or do not have the time or training to intervene.

Tens of thousands of older adults spend their final days in nursing homes …

Aging care is not about fixing every wrong note

Gerald Kuo

Conditions and Diseases

May 1, 2026

In medicine, we are trained to notice decline. We track blood pressure, glucose, gait speed, medication lists, cognitive scores, fall risk, frailty, and health care utilization. These measures matter; they save lives and guide care. But we risk reducing aging to a checklist of deficits.

I was recently reminded that aging care requires something much harder to measure: the ability to let an older person remain whole.

Taiwan has entered a new …

Why psychological safety in health care systems matters

Tiffiny Black, DM, MPA, MBA

Conditions and Diseases

May 1, 2026

In health care, we often talk about psychological safety as something leaders create, encouraging people to speak up, be open, and learn from mistakes. But in practice, many clinicians already know: Whether it is truly safe to speak depends on what happens after they do. The term “psychological safety,” introduced by Amy Edmondson, describes a shared belief that it is safe to take interpersonal risks. But in health care environments, …

Why our health care system is failing chronic disease patients

Beata Pasek, EdD

Conditions and Diseases

April 30, 2026

Chronic disease is rising. Our system is not designed for it. This is not a controversial observation. Across clinical practice, research, and health system leadership, there is growing recognition that the burden of chronic illness is increasing and beginning earlier in life. What is less often acknowledged is that the structure of our health care system has not evolved at the same pace. In clinical settings, this shift is already …

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