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Hair loss and the emotional toll: a doctor’s perspective

Conditions

May 9, 2026

The story that I still can recall is about a patient sitting across from me and apologizing for telling me, “I know that this is not really a health concern for me.” It was neither pain nor a life-threatening illness that brought him to see me. It was just baldness. However, what he was feeling was absolutely real. He discussed the importance of not using mirrors. Not accepting invitations because …

How corporate medicine is eroding truth and patient dignity

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

Physician

May 9, 2026

The first time I received care as a patient in academic medicine, I felt something I did not fully appreciate until years later: safety. Not just clinical safety, but moral safety, the sense that the people caring for me were operating inside a culture that valued truth, transparency, and professional integrity. When I practiced and taught in academic medicine, I was surrounded by colleagues who believed, almost instinctively, that honesty …

Bridging the health equity gap with artificial intelligence

Judith Eguzoikpe, MD, MPH

Policy

May 9, 2026

Let us be honest about what is really happening: Automation is coming for medicine, and equity is still waiting in line. Across hospital systems, medical schools, and conference stages, a profession is holding its breath. The question consuming medicine right now is not about patients. It is about survival. About whether artificial intelligence (AI) will hollow out what took decades to build, whether the clinical judgment earned through sleepless residencies …

No nurse is better than a bad nurse in your child’s home [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

May 8, 2026

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

What happens when the nurses sent to care for your medically fragile child have never even touched the equipment keeping him alive? Patient advocate Ashley Youngdale knows firsthand. As the mother of a …

A touching story of patient gratitude and a dozen eggs

Dr. Damane Zehra

Physician

May 8, 2026

I was in a deep sleep when my phone rang. I looked around; it was still dark. For a moment, I thought it was my alarm, but it was only 5 a.m. It was not the alarm after all. Instead, it was a phone call from an unknown number. I answered it, and to my surprise, it was a patient I had seen in the clinic the previous week. She …

The medical case for teaching kindness in early childhood development

Paul Dranichnikov, MD, PhD

Physician

May 8, 2026

As a physician, I encounter humanity at its most unguarded. I have held trembling hands, delivered devastating news, and witnessed emotions stripped of pretense. In exam rooms and hospital corridors, patterns emerge with unsettling consistency. Under stress, fear, or pain, humans default to self-protection. We become impatient. Defensive. Sometimes cruel. Not because we are irredeemable, but because survival instincts speak loudly when vulnerability is exposed. Kindness, by contrast, does not …

A new approach to treating recurrent urinary tract infections

Jitesh Patel, MD

Conditions

May 8, 2026

She came to me with a manila folder stuffed with urine culture reports. 14 of them, spanning three years. Every one showed a different organism, or the same organism with a longer and longer list of resistances. Her most recent culture, the one that finally prompted her primary care physician to refer her to urology, showed an Escherichia coli (E. coli) resistant to 15 antibiotics. 15. She had been treated …

3 things AI in health care investing cannot evaluate

Harsha Moole, MD

Tech

May 8, 2026

I built an AI-powered system that sources and scouts healthcare startup companies and generates structured investment memos on them in under ten minutes. It pulls data from public filings, clinical trial registries, patent databases, and competitive landscapes. It scores companies across multiple risk dimensions. It produces fifteen-section analyses that would take a human analyst days to assemble.

I use it constantly. And I would never let it make an investment decision.

I …

Your doctor saved your life but won’t return your call [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

May 7, 2026

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

What happens when a physician who spent decades treating patients suddenly finds himself on the other side of the exam table, unable to get a simple answer about his own aneurysm? Jeffrey Junig, …

How medical malpractice cases reveal health care system flaws

Howard Smith, MD

Physician

May 7, 2026

Again, I must discuss two cases of medical malpractice which I feel best demonstrate the quagmire our health care system finds itself in. One is a medical malpractice case against a hospital. It follows that this case also has a merit of only 33.48 percent. Nevertheless, there is a legal strategy that tips the scale by not permitting testimony discussing conditions occurring in another country, where the first 17 …

Why we must fix our fragmented health care system architecture

Vance Alm, MD

Physician

May 7, 2026

Last year I watched a patient of mine, I will call him Raymond, navigate what should have been a straightforward referral to cardiology. He had insurance. Good insurance. The kind politicians point to when they say the system is working. It took 11 weeks, four phone calls, two prior authorizations, and one emergency department (ED) visit to get him seen. He was not uninsured. He was not poor. He was …

5 questions to ask before you choose a credentialing service

GetPracticeHelp

Finance

May 7, 2026

Credentialing mistakes are expensive before they are visible

Credentialing problems usually look administrative until the revenue gap appears. A new practice may be open, staffed, leased, insured, and ready for patients, but one missing payer panel can cut off a revenue stream for a quarter or more.

The timeline is not small. Payer enrollment commonly takes 90 to 180 days. For a practice carrying rent, software, payroll, malpractice coverage, phones, internet, marketing, …

Prior authorization during surgery is not oversight

Steven E. Warren, MD, DPA

Physician

May 7, 2026

She was forty-eight years old and had already been through enough.

Her uterus had prolapsed. If you have not heard the term, let me be plain. The uterus had descended through the vaginal opening. It was outside her body. This is not a metaphor and it is not a minor complaint. It is a complete structural failure of the pelvic floor that turns walking, sitting, and basic dignity into a daily …

California’s governor race is missing a health care plan

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

Policy

May 7, 2026

As California gears up for its gubernatorial primaries and debates, the familiar issues dominate the conversation: housing affordability, crime, taxes, and economic pressures. Health care surfaces, but rarely as a central priority with concrete, actionable solutions. Candidates offer broad strokes on affordability or protecting programs from federal changes, yet the crushing realities of escalating costs, physician shortages, regulatory burdens, and a system skewed against preventive, relationship-centered care receive little more …

How ambient artificial intelligence can transform team-based care

Matt Sakumoto, MD

Tech

May 7, 2026

For years, the conversation around burnout has centered on physicians, and more recently, ambient artificial intelligence (AI) has been positioned as a solution to reduce after-hours charting and reclaim time from the electronic health record (EHR). But as these tools gain traction, a gap is becoming harder to ignore: Many are designed for a single user, even as care is delivered across teams and workflows that extend well beyond the …

The emotional impact of infertility is grief unspoken

Oluyemisi Famuyiwa, MD

Conditions

May 7, 2026

Long before in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics, fertility apps, hormone testing, or egg freezing, women understood that fertility carried social meaning far beyond biology.

In 19th-century Yorubaland, a woman named Efunsetan Aniwura rose to become one of the most powerful figures in Ibadan history. She was wealthy, influential, politically connected, and held the prestigious title of Iyalode, a leadership position reserved for prominent women in society. Yet historical accounts and Yoruba …

Why individualized menopause care matters today

Kari Waddell, FNP

Conditions

May 7, 2026

In the past, women in menopause were brushed aside and told that their symptoms were “just stress” or a “natural part of aging.” Implicit in this message was the expectation that women were to push through this transition and endure its symptoms on their own without support. Now, the pendulum has swung and this midlife transition is finally getting some attention. The problem now is that this newfound medical attention …

Patients don’t need certainty, they need your reasoning out loud [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

May 6, 2026

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

What if the biggest driver of unnecessary ER visits, malpractice claims, and patient anxiety isn’t a missed diagnosis but a missed sentence? Alan P. Feren, a retired surgeon, independent physician, health care consultant, …

How vocal biomarkers are revolutionizing early detection

Kang Hsu, Jr., MD

Conditions

May 6, 2026

Early detection has always been one of medicine’s most powerful tools. The sooner we can identify cognitive, behavioral, or neurological conditions, the greater the potential benefit for patients, their caregivers, and their providers. That truth is even more pressing today. Thanks to rapid advances in artificial intelligence and speech analysis, vocal biomarkers have emerged as a fast, accurate, and non-invasive way to screen for a growing range of conditions. The …

Patient autonomy in psychiatry and the ethics of care

Wonyun Lee, MD

Physician

May 6, 2026

One of my patients, K, arrived in the United States in florid psychosis. Back in China, she worked as a housekeeper and lived independently. She took her medications reluctantly but consistently, forced upon her by her parents. After her parents passed away, she stopped her medications. She became convinced her life was being controlled by the Chinese government. In terror, she booked a ticket to the land of freedom, America. …

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