KevinMD.com

October 11, 2026Oct 11, 2026

An emergency physician bought a new iPad and found 53 phone numbers he had forgotten were there. Each one was a family he put on a video call to say goodbye before he intubated their loved one. Howie Mell is…

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Conditions and diseases

Digital eye strain may be masking dry eye disease

Pam Theriot, OD

October 11, 2026Oct 11, 2026

More than 16 million Americans are estimated to have a diagnosis of dry eye disease. And the number of symptomatic patients living without a diagnosis is thought to be almost double. As a health care provider, these patients come through your office every day. You can help them get the care they need before suffering from a significant decrease in their workplace productivity, or an increase in symptoms of anxiety …

Conditions and diseases

Why does the male infertility evaluation start so late?

Justin Houman, MD

October 11, 2026Oct 11, 2026

Three years into their infertility workup, after a second failed transfer, a couple came to see me. She had been the patient that entire time. Hysterosalpingogram, diagnostic laparoscopy, two retrievals, somewhere north of $40,000 that their insurance didn’t touch. He came to the appointment because their REI had finally suggested it, and I think he was mostly there to be supportive.

He brought a folder. In it was a semen analysis …

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Physician voices

The scarlet letter O: a physician on Ozempic stigma

Robert Pretzlaff, MD, MBA

October 11, 2026Oct 11, 2026

Stop your moralizing. I grow weary of your superior airs. I am a 60-plus-year-old physician who has led a disciplined life. Despite going to the gym two to three times a week and with an acute awareness of my caloric…

Stop your moralizing. I grow weary of your superior airs.

I am a 60-plus-year-old physician who has led a disciplined life. Despite going to the gym two to three times a week and with an acute awareness of my caloric intake, I had been overweight for many years. I, along with nearly three-quarters of Americans, have committed the sin of being heavy. Today I have a BMI slightly above 25 and …

Physician voices

How to prepare for a doctor’s appointment and be heard

Terry Adirim, MD, MPH, MBA

October 11, 2026Oct 11, 20262

An excerpt from The Prepared Patient: Your Guide to Surviving the Health Care System. In today's health care system, patient-centered care often feels more like an unattainable ideal than a reality. Systemic inefficiencies seem to overshadow the promise of collaboration,…

An excerpt from The Prepared Patient: Your Guide to Surviving the Health Care System.

In today’s health care system, patient-centered care often feels more like an unattainable ideal than a reality. Systemic inefficiencies seem to overshadow the promise of collaboration, empathy, and individualized attention, while rushed appointments and fragmented communication prevail. The result? A disconnect between what patients need and what the system delivers.

One of the most significant barriers to …

Physician voices

Medical malpractice verdicts rarely heal what hurts

Anthony Grandelis, MD

October 11, 2026Oct 11, 2026

We have built a society that runs on the promise of justice, and it is quietly making us miserable. We wait for the verdict, the apology, the firing, the settlement. We believe that when it comes, the wrong will be righted and we will finally feel whole. But, to me, the idea that justice rights a wrong is not true. We only think it makes us feel better. But does …

Health technology

AI isn’t going rogue. Clinical AI has a quieter danger.

Brian Hudes, MD

October 11, 2026Oct 11, 2026

The headlines have a rhythm to them now. Artificial intelligence is "going rogue" (lying, cheating, hacking, scheming to preserve itself), and the next model may be powerful enough, in Bill Gates's phrase, to cause a billion deaths. For those of…

The headlines have a rhythm to them now. Artificial intelligence is “going rogue” (lying, cheating, hacking, scheming to preserve itself), and the next model may be powerful enough, in Bill Gates’s phrase, to cause a billion deaths. For those of us watching AI arrive in our clinics and hospitals at the very same moment, it is a strange dissonance: We are being told to adopt a technology and to fear …

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Doctors on social media should ask this question first [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

October 10, 2026Oct 10, 2026

Your patients can see everything you post. Tali Lando was posting funny videos from her office while two of her young patients lay in the hospital struggling to recover, and it left her torn. She is a pediatric otolaryngologist and…

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Physician voices

Who protects children from a livestreamed execution?

Timothy Lesaca, MD

October 10, 2026Oct 10, 2026

Before this or any government broadcasts an execution, it should first consider an obvious public health question: How will it protect children and other vulnerable people who might see the footage? This question needs a medical answer, no matter what…

On October 8, 2026, the United States Pentagon announced plans to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan, who was convicted for the 2009 Fort Hood mass …

Health technology

Medical device antitrust wins are not enough for hospitals

Vince Figueredo, MD

October 10, 2026Oct 10, 2026

As a health care provider, I live every day at the front lines of a system that is stretched thin and pulled in too many directions. Patients are getting sicker, clinicians are burning out, and hospitals are under relentless pressure to do more with less. The one thing we all agree on, across party lines, specialties, and institutions, is that the cost of health care in the United States is …

Physician voices

Losing a patient who only ever asked for a newspaper

Dr. Arshad Ashraf

October 10, 2026Oct 10, 20262

Working in the ICU is one of the toughest experiences for a new budding doctor. It's rare to find a patient who can talk. Most lie unconscious, connected to ventilators and machines that hum and beep around the clock. They…

Working in the ICU is one of the toughest experiences for a new budding doctor. It’s rare to find a patient who can talk. Most lie unconscious, connected to ventilators and machines that hum and beep around the clock. They exist in a space between life and death, and every day we witness some of them take their final breath.

That’s why I was surprised (and honestly, a little delighted) when …

Physician voices

Dolly bought Porter Wagoner’s songs, then gave them back

Osmund Agbo, MD

October 10, 2026Oct 10, 2026

It was in late spring of 1964, just a day after graduating from high school, that a diminutive farm girl packed her belongings and bade farewell to the life she had known in the Smoky Mountains of rural Tennessee. Her destination? Nashville, the mecca of country music. She left behind the two-bedroom cottage where she had lived with her parents and eleven siblings, carrying little more than a dream and …

Physician voices

California medical board power and the 2026 governor’s race

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

October 10, 2026Oct 10, 2026

A couple of weekends ago in a residential community in Davis, a board member came to a homeowner's door with uncorroborated claims that the homeowner's son had accepted a ride from a third party who speeds in the neighborhood. The…

A couple of weekends ago in a residential community in Davis, a board member came to a homeowner’s door with uncorroborated claims that the homeowner’s son had accepted a ride from a third party who speeds in the neighborhood. The details, including the car type, color, and driver’s complexion, did not match reality. When the homeowner said he would speak with his son, the board member identified himself by title …

Health policy

Can health plans afford to ignore tobacco harm reduction?

Edward Anselm, MD

October 10, 2026Oct 10, 2026

Health insurance companies have always been ambivalent about treatment of cigarette smokers. Tobacco-related disease accounts for roughly 8 percent of U.S. medical spending, while smoking cessation is among the most cost-effective interventions in medicine. Yet the economics look different from the perspective of an individual insurer. Treatment of tobacco use generates costs today, while many of the savings from avoiding hospitalizations, and preventing cancer and other tobacco-related diseases, accrue years …

Physician voices

A medical home pioneer meets fragmented care as a patient

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

October 10, 2026Oct 10, 2026

For years, I spoke about the importance of coordinated care. Long before the term became fashionable, I helped build what would later become known as a medical home at Minot Air Force Base. The concept was straightforward. Somebody had to own the whole patient. Not just a diagnosis. Not just a specialty. Not just a laboratory value. The whole patient.

At the time, it seemed obvious. It still does. What surprises …

Health technology

What AI for physicians actually looks like day to day

Yusuke Watanabe, MD, PhD

October 10, 2026Oct 10, 2026

I perform transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) procedures for a living. Nothing about my work in the cath lab has been taken over by artificial intelligence, and I don't expect it to be anytime soon. But almost everything I do…

I perform transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) procedures for a living. Nothing about my work in the cath lab has been taken over by artificial intelligence, and I don’t expect it to be anytime soon. But almost everything I do outside the procedure room (the documentation, the teaching preparation, the manuscript revisions, the patient handouts) has changed beyond recognition in the past two years.

I want to describe what that actually …

Patient voices

Done ADHD telehealth case: the mother’s warning no one heard

Nicole Drapeau Gillen

October 10, 2026Oct 10, 2026

On Oct. 2, a federal jury in Michigan convicted Dr. Jonathan Decker of distributing more than 2 million stimulant pills through Done, a subscription ADHD telehealth platform. Prosecutors said he prescribed without examining patients and was paid more than $1 million. He is the 11th person convicted in what prosecutors describe as a $100 million drug distribution and health care fraud scheme tied to the company.

Most of the …

Physician voices

4 steps to prove a breach of standard of care

Howard Smith, MD

October 10, 2026Oct 10, 2026

Step 1: Collate. Organize the standard of care and the medical intervention into 10 corresponding phases with a respective duty. Step 2: Compare. Compare corresponding phases using three measures: Background risk: Each phase in the standard of care. It is…

Step 1: Collate. Organize the standard of care and the medical intervention into 10 corresponding phases with a respective duty.

Step 2: Compare. Compare corresponding phases using three measures:

Background risk: Each phase in the standard of care. It is the probability that the complication is a random error-of-nature.
Relative risk: Risk of harm for each phase in the medical intervention. If there is no difference between a phase in standard

…

The Podcast by KevinMD

Trusting the lab over the patient is the new medical error [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

October 9, 2026Oct 9, 2026

The lab says the potassium is critically low. You walk in, and the patient looks completely fine. Duane Penshorn is an emergency physician and author. This episode is based on his article "Automation bias is the new medical error," published…

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The lab says the potassium is critically low. You walk in, and the patient looks completely fine. Duane Penshorn is an emergency physician and author. This episode is based on his article “Automation bias is the new medical error,” published on KevinMD. He explains that automation bias got its …

Health policy

What would Dolly do about universal health care?

Alisa Berger, MD

October 9, 2026Oct 9, 20262

The passing of Dolly Parton was a gut punch to those like me assuming she still had many years left to spread kindness on this earth. It was incredible to see how she touched so many hearts well beyond U.S. borders. I got tears in my eyes watching Britain’s King’s Guard play “9 to 5” in her memory. Though her beaming smile may be gone, her eternal optimism remains. We …

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