HBCUs built the doctors America cannot afford to lose

Medical Education
August 9, 2026

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have served as critical pillars of America’s health care workforce for more than a century. Despite representing only a small fraction of U.S. colleges and universities, HBCUs have produced a disproportionate number of Black physicians, nurses, pharmacists, public health professionals, and biomedical scientists. At a time when the United States faces physician shortages, widening health disparities, and declining access to care in underserved communities, …

Read more…

HBCUs built the doctors America cannot afford to lose

Moral distress is the wound behind bedside care

Conditions and Diseases
August 9, 2026

A physician I follow on social media is an incredibly talented artist. He turns medical scenarios into cartoon sketches, as if they belong in a Sunday newspaper instead of on a telephone screen.

One of his recent renderings depicted the typical ICU patient: intubated, sedated, and surrounded by machines. Standing beside the hospital bed were two individuals with captions over their heads saying, “Look at all of this! This is torture! …

Read more…

Moral distress is the wound behind bedside care

The $17 billion case for provider data accuracy

Health Technology
August 9, 2026

Health care is spending billions to modernize the future while ignoring one of its most expensive operational failures.

Provider data, the foundational information that determines who gets paid, where patients receive care, and how networks function, remains inaccurate across much of the industry. The consequences are staggering: billions in administrative waste, provider frustration, payment delays, network disruption, compliance exposure, and poor member experiences. With more than $17 billion lost annually …

Read more…

The $17 billion case for provider data accuracy

Physician time management is a relationship, not a skill

Physician
August 8, 2026

I am sitting at my desk today, a typical clinic “good day.” My EMR is open. I have several active messages from my secretary, several messages from patients, appointment requests, pending consult requests, medication refill requests, insurance requests, hospital emails, medical students, medical student schedule change, an email from a resident, several hospital emails, and a hospital schedule email, all needing my attention at the same time. And this is …

Read more…

Physician time management is a relationship, not a skill

Explaining clinical reasoning to patients in five questions

Physician
August 8, 2026

Every summer, a new class of medical students puts on a short white coat for the first time and walks onto a hospital floor. Elsewhere, third-year students begin their first clinical clerkships, and new residents are several weeks into carrying responsibility that no longer ends when a lecture, examination, or scheduled exercise is over.

They will be taught multiple approaches to the art, science, and practice of medicine. They will learn …

Read more…

Explaining clinical reasoning to patients in five questions

OCD misconceptions turn a serious illness into a quirk

Conditions and Diseases
August 8, 2026

“I’m so OCD.” “I think I’m a little OCD, I like things neat.” Clinicians hear versions of this constantly, said casually, sometimes as a joke, sometimes with a note of pride. The person is usually describing themselves as particular, exacting, or a little controlling. Almost none of it has anything to do with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

OCD is defined by intrusive, unwanted thoughts that generate real anxiety, disgust, or dread, and …

Read more…

OCD misconceptions turn a serious illness into a quirk

The genetic data Charcot-Marie-Tooth research overlooks

Conditions and Diseases
August 8, 2026

Imagine trying to complete a complex jigsaw puzzle when most of the pieces are missing. For decades, that has been the reality of genetic research in Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease. Much of what the world knows about CMT has been built from Western patient populations, creating a knowledge base that is valuable but incomplete. If we are serious about developing treatments that work for everyone, the global scientific community must pay …

Read more…

The genetic data Charcot-Marie-Tooth research overlooks

Automation bias in medicine already has doctors deferring

Physician
August 8, 2026

At the hospital where I operate, most of the pediatric subspecialists never walk through the door. Endocrinology, hematology, infectious disease: The consult happens by phone. They read the chart, they ask questions, they leave a plan. I would like to tell you the plan is usually right. I have no way to know that. The hospitalist examined the child. The specialist did not, and there is no second version of …

Read more…

Automation bias in medicine already has doctors deferring

How administrative bloat broke American medicine

Physician
August 8, 2026

I trained at Cook County Hospital in Chicago thirty years ago. We did not have RVUs. We did not have prior authorization. We did not have a ratio of ten administrators for every physician. We had patients who came through a door where nobody asked for their insurance card, and we did our best for them. That was the system. It worked.

What replaced it is documented in public data that …

Read more…

How administrative bloat broke American medicine

Why clinical judgment alone is not enough for autism

Conditions and Diseases
August 8, 2026

A recent JAMA Pediatrics article concludes that the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) is “generally not required” for diagnosing autism in young children. The authors report 90 percent agreement between a clinician’s initial diagnosis and the diagnosis made after reviewing ADOS results. They argue that experienced developmental-behavioral pediatricians (DBPs) can diagnose autism accurately without structured tools.

That conclusion may hold inside the eight academic centers included in the study. It does …

Read more…

Why clinical judgment alone is not enough for autism

Smoking cessation billing is revenue your practice misses

Conditions and Diseases
August 8, 2026

Although people who smoke cigarettes say that clinicians routinely advise them to quit smoking, this is not reflected in the studies of electronic medical records, pharmacy claims, or medical claims. A recent article in the American Journal of Managed Care reported that only 1 percent of outpatient office visits at an academic medical center billed for tobacco treatment. A repeat of the same study design published in AJPM …

Read more…

Smoking cessation billing is revenue your practice misses

When good parenting looks different across cultures [PODCAST]

Podcast
August 7, 2026
YouTube video

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

Two families raise their kids in completely different ways. Both are doing it right. So why do clinicians so often assume one of them is doing something wrong? Najat Fadlalla, a developmental behavioral pediatric fellow, returns to unpack how cultural bias creeps …

Read more…

When good parenting looks different across cultures [PODCAST]

How pharmacology mnemonics got me through med school

Medical Education
August 7, 2026

It was almost midnight, and I was staring at the word oxybutynin like it had personally wronged me.

I had seen it maybe twenty times that week. Flashcard, missed. Practice question, missed. I knew it treated something with the bladder, I think, and that it blocked some receptor, and past that, my brain just went quiet. Around me, the library was clearing out. I had two hundred more drugs to learn, …

Read more…

How pharmacology mnemonics got me through med school

ADVERTISEMENT

The Cartesian split in mental and physical health care

Conditions and Diseases
August 7, 2026

The separation of mental and physical health care still rests on a Cartesian inheritance, the old assumption that mind and body are fundamentally different kinds of things, one physical and mechanical, the other immaterial and spiritual. That framework may have served a purpose in an era when medicine lacked the tools to explain what it could not measure, allowing physicians to attend to the body while matters of the mind …

Read more…

The Cartesian split in mental and physical health care

What patients get wrong about stem cell therapy for pain

Conditions and Diseases
August 7, 2026

A few months ago, a new patient walked into my clinic carrying a folder nearly two inches thick. She had undergone years of physical therapy, chiropractic care, epidural steroid injections, anti-inflammatory medications, opioid therapy, and consultations with multiple specialists. Before sitting down, she asked a question I now hear almost weekly: “Doctor, what about stem cells? I’ve heard they can regenerate my spine.”

It is a reasonable question and one that …

Read more…

What patients get wrong about stem cell therapy for pain

The myth of free health care in Canada

Health Policy
August 7, 2026

Discussions related to the strengths and weaknesses of the American health care system abound. When discussing the latter, some may argue that the American system should more closely mirror that of its northern neighbor, one that is described as publicly funded and that allegedly provides “free” and readily available health service to all citizens regardless of social status or financial means. Sadly, there is little truth in the above description. …

Read more…

The myth of free health care in Canada

Why moral injury in health care outlasts the pandemic

Conditions and Diseases
August 7, 2026

History deserves honesty.

Years have passed since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and with distance comes a natural desire to reflect on what happened. We should absolutely evaluate the decisions that were made. We should question policies, examine the evidence, and learn from our mistakes. That is how science grows, and health care improves.

But there is a difference between learning from history and rewriting it. Lately, I have watched with …

Read more…

Why moral injury in health care outlasts the pandemic

Medical school application barriers fail Native people

Medical Education
August 7, 2026

Everything medical schools believe about us seems wrong. Medical schools call us “Native American,” but many of us dislike this word. The traditional among us refuse this colonial branding with every fiber of our being. Yet many people believe the media that says “Indian” is offensive and so they call us “Native American.” Ask yourself: Would a Ukrainian mother ever call herself Native Russian? Would a Palestinian man ever call …

Read more…

Medical school application barriers fail Native people

A survivor waits on testosterone after prostate cancer

Conditions and Diseases
August 7, 2026

My testosterone level is 177 ng/dL. I am intimately familiar with this number, having checked it myself on my own laboratory slip, just as I have reviewed countless lab results for patients throughout my 35-year medical career. But this time, however, the patient’s focus was on me.

One year ago, I underwent a prostatectomy for low-grade, minimally aggressive prostate cancer. The surgery was successful, and the pathology results were reassuring. My …

Read more…

A survivor waits on testosterone after prostate cancer

Saving a child’s permanent tooth after dental trauma

Conditions and Diseases
August 7, 2026

When trauma threatens a child’s permanent tooth

A new electric scooter for a tenth birthday party. In the excitement of trying it out for the first time and demonstrating the speed to friends, the new rider doesn’t notice the curb and goes flying over the handlebars. Landing face-first on the sidewalk, the upper lip and front teeth bear the brunt of the impact. This scenario is occurring with increased frequency, especially …

Read more…

Saving a child’s permanent tooth after dental trauma

1561
pages