Melting the iron triangle: Prioritizing health equity in dynamic, innovative health care landscapes

Policy
August 9, 2022

As a master of health administration (MHA) student completing my administrative residency in the health technology industry, I chose to dedicate my capstone project to a topic positioned at the intersection of what I had learned in graduate school and what I had learned during my residency. While administrative residencies are typically in a hospital or consulting setting, I matched with a primary-care-focused electronic health record company as the organization’s …

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The great resignation can be stopped. Here’s how.

Policy
August 8, 2022

The 2022 Top States for Business designation has higher stakes than ever, as companies compete for top talent while balancing inflation, supply chain issues, and other ongoing pandemic side effects. However, the solution to employee recruitment and retention is not an expensive corporate relocation; it is time for a corporate wake-up call. American companies must stop or re-examine existing efforts to engage with their employees and instead meaningfully adjust …

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Certainty is a fading flame in a failing body

Physician
August 8, 2022

“You should prepare for the future. Your son will never be independent.”

I do not recall hearing those words at their source, but I was only eight when they were relayed to me by my parents. At the time my diagnosis, now characterized as juvenile myoclonic epilepsy, was poorly understood and often confused with more virulent disabling neurological conditions. Despite this fact, I have used the doctor’s prediction as fuel for …

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Monkeypox and the prolonged COVID pandemic could seal the fate of the health care system

Physician
August 8, 2022

I understand it’s been over two years since the World Health Organization announced the coronavirus pandemic, and we are tired.

I speak for the thousands of health care workers and frontline workers: We are exhausted, we feel taken for granted, and for many of us, we are leaving the industry. In some cases, we went from health care heroes being villanized as if we somehow benefited from the pandemic. So many …

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Teen dies when blood culture protocol botched [PODCAST]

Podcast
August 7, 2022
YouTube video

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“Address the patient’s chief complaint first. In this case, the other symptoms were only side effects of the main problem.

Pay attention to lab work. In this case, the elevated white blood count and the related blood culture …

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CMS Medicare fee cuts: The altruism of physicians is used against them

Policy
August 7, 2022

It’s hard to concisely put into words how frustrated physicians are right now. How many other professional groups out there have to fight to not have their compensation cut multiple times a year? Recently, CMS released its proposed physician fee schedule for Medicare for 2023, which reduces the conversion factor by 4.42%. This compounds upon additional cuts such as the resumption …

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We’re reacting to medical errors the wrong way

Physician
August 7, 2022

Medical mistakes are as old as the practice of medicine itself, but it wasn’t until 1999 that the United States started paying more attention to them.

Over twenty years later, we may be reducing medical errors — a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found significant decreases in mistakes in cases of pneumonia, acute myocardial infarction, heart …

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Opioid-free orthopedic surgery: Why (and how) my patients go opioid free after surgery

Conditions
August 7, 2022

Primum non nocere.  First, do no harm.

All doctors are familiar with this credo. From ancient precepts such as the Hippocratic Oath promising to abstain from doing harm to the modern bioethics principle of nonmaleficence, the calling of physicians involves striving to help alleviate suffering and avoid making it worse. In our increasingly complex health care and data environment, avoiding inadvertent harm can be more difficult than one might expect.

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We must disrupt harm

Meds
August 6, 2022

In the mid-1980s, with the AIDS epidemic on the horizon, austere conservative Margaret Thatcher sanctioned the first needle exchanges in the U.K. to prevent the budgetary burden that HIV might otherwise have become on the National Health Service. Nearly forty years later, New York City opened its first supervised injection sites in November of 2021, where intravenous drug users inject their substances of choice under the watchful eye …

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As we live in fear, there is still hope

Physician
August 6, 2022

Fear. It means something different to each person, but collectively we can all agree that fear can be something that drives us to succeed (fearing failure), causes us to take care of ourselves (fear of poor health), and can even promote experiences that wouldn’t otherwise be pursued (fear of missing out, affectionately known by the acronym FOMO). This isn’t the kind of fear I had this past Sunday sitting in …

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My “dig deep button” is officially out of service

Physician
August 6, 2022

I started my hospitalist shift like any other day. I arrived at 5:30 a.m. for shift hand-off at 7 a.m. A full hospitalist load and endless administrative tasks to complete, the duality of both roles punctured me like a venomous snake bite. I had two full-time jobs to complete in 12 hours. Impossible! Or was it? I added one and one-half hours to my shift at the beginning–time hidden behind …

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What it takes to build a pediatric weight management program [PODCAST]

Podcast
August 5, 2022
YouTube video

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“Amazing pediatricians are back where I was years ago, with their C-suite asking for business plans for the medical side of their adolescent bariatric surgery programs. The reality is corporate health care has infiltrated pediatric health systems, …

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Student advocacy through the Student Osteopathic Medical Association (SOMA)

Education
August 5, 2022

“Nerves ablaze, my voice cracked as I ended my remarks outlining the need for equitable data collection. I leaned towards the screen, adjusted my eyeline to make eye contact, and asked Representative Thomas Suozzi to support The Equitable Data Collection and Disclosure on COVID-19 Act. Representative Suozzi paused for a second, appeared to think over, or perhaps through the points of my argument–and then responded resolutely with, ‘I will cosign …

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Physician success is a team sport, so why are you on the field alone?

Physician
August 5, 2022

Get off the field.

Go back to the dugout and rally your team.

Create your rules of engagement.

The structure and hierarchy of medicine teach doctors to compete with one another. From the beginning, we’re told there are a finite number of acceptance letters sent to aspiring physicians. In medical school, we compete for one of a limited number of slots in highly selective and competitive training programs. And as attendings, we have …

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Why doctors should write poetry

Physician
August 5, 2022

It’s been two and a half years post-pandemic, and I still don’t feel normal.

There’s a dark veil hanging over my life. I feel oppressed, unable to practice the way I want, unable to live and think in ways other than this abnormal new biological pseudoscience I’m not expected to question so that I’m more inclusive.

There’s a sense of lost purpose like I no longer work to feel fulfilled. Instead, I …

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Patient-initiated collaborative texting [PODCAST]

Podcast
August 4, 2022
YouTube video

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“Nearly three-quarters of consumers say they prefer texting with a business if an actual human is the returning texts — no bots need reply.

But the rise of artificial intelligence has led to further advances in smart texting, …

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People behaving badly: 4 steps to de-escalate hostile people

Physician
August 4, 2022

Imagine that you are a brand-new attending in a hospital. You have your new starched white coat and stethoscope around your neck. Before you enter your patient’s room, the nurse says, “Whew! Good luck! The patient’s dad is really angry! He’s been yelling for the last ten minutes!”

Are you prepared? Do you know what to do?

The boundaries of unacceptable behavior have eroded in the past few years. Politicians, law enforcement, …

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We are all responsible for women physicians’ pay discrepancy

Physician
August 4, 2022

A recent JAMA article showed that starting salaries for female physicians were lower than that of their male counterparts in most subspecialties.

New physicians are not expected to have many differentiating factors besides gender, yet the starting salaries differ. It is important to note that specialties with a higher percentage of women also have lower salaries for bother men and women. As the percentage of women physicians in a given …

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