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3 fixes for primary care access in the ChatGPT era

Tech

May 28, 2026

A new patient in her 40s recently walked into one of our clinics with a printout of a ChatGPT conversation. For three days, she had been typing her symptoms into the chatbot, describing chest tightness and a fatigue that was not going away, asking whether she should be worried.

The reason she turned to AI was straightforward. She had tried to schedule a primary care appointment with her previous provider and …

School nursing for medically complex kids is not guaranteed

Ashley Youngdale

Conditions

May 28, 2026

We didn’t know that school districts have the power to ignore medical decisions made by doctors for medically complex children. We found out when we switched districts, assuming our son’s complex care would follow him the way it always had. It hadn’t been an issue before. His home care nurses went to school with him, and his needs were consistently supported. Our new district was one of the strongest and …

Communication access is a patient safety issue

Chris Ross, PhD, CCC-SLP

Conditions

May 28, 2026

Imagine nearly dying while being unable to communicate your health needs, and the important medical decision-making doesn’t involve you. All that is left for you to do is to feel frustrated, helpless, and afraid.

I had such an experience at the height of the pandemic when I contracted COVID-19 and landed in the intensive care unit. I was put on a ventilator and then on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, the highest form …

Psychedelics and neuroplasticity are rewiring the brain

Marc Arginteanu, MD

Conditions

May 28, 2026

For most of my career as a neurosurgeon, I’ve worked under a cold, hard assumption: The brain’s wiring, once trashed or locked into a pathological rut, is remarkably stubborn. We can resect a tumor, clip an aneurysm, or untether a nerve, but the deeper circuits driving depression, PTSD, and trauma often laugh at our scalpels and stay stubbornly resistant to standard medications. For decades, the standard fix for PTSD or …

The balloon catheter bleeding risk no one talks about

Deanna Vargo, RN, Nish Chasmawala, and Simone Hugar

Conditions

May 28, 2026

For the longest time, indwelling balloon catheters have been the norm in the care of ICU patients. They are often used to help nursing staff keep high-acuity patients clean, manage fecal incontinence, and curb breakdown of skin. Initially, they have been seen to be a useful and reliable solution for problems related to fecal incontinence (FI).

But in oncology ICUs, their use brings up an important question that is overlooked: Are …

After Match Day, orthopedic surgery is finally open to every kind of surgeon [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

May 27, 2026

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

When you open your Match Day envelope, you step into an orthopedic surgery field that looks nothing like it used to. John E. Klibanoff, an orthopedic surgeon, discusses his article “Navigating your …

The quiet shift that changes physician decision making

Bertina Marie Hooks, MD

Physician

May 27, 2026

There is a subtle but profound shift that happens when your identity changes.

Not the kind of shift that comes with a new title or role, but the kind that is forced. The kind that emerges when something foundational is altered, and the assumptions you once relied on no longer hold in the same way.

For physicians, identity is often tightly interwoven with decision-making. We are trained to trust our judgment, to …

Interventional pain procedures for chronic back pain

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

Conditions

May 27, 2026

Chronic back, leg, and pelvic pain frequently result from degenerative spine conditions, disc herniations, spinal stenosis, facet arthropathy, sacroiliac joint dysfunction, or vertebrogenic pain. When conservative measures such as physical therapy, medications, and activity modification fail, interventional pain procedures provide targeted, minimally invasive options to address specific pain generators.

These techniques are typically performed on an outpatient basis with image guidance, offering shorter recovery times and lower risk compared to open …

5 principles for protecting physician reputation

Gerald Kuo

Conditions

May 27, 2026

Health care workers understand the power of a record.

One sentence in a medical chart can follow a patient for years. A diagnosis, a risk label, or a preliminary impression may shape how future clinicians see that person. That is why we are taught to document carefully, update records when new information appears, and avoid turning uncertainty into a permanent label.

Public institutions should follow the same principle. When a state medical …

Profit motive in medicine: lessons from private detention

Patrick Hudson, MD

Physician

May 27, 2026

Who staffs the immigration detention centers, the temporary holding camps, the privately run facilities where thousands of frightened people are waiting behind fences and concrete walls?

That is not a rhetorical question. It is a practical one. There are doctors, nurses, administrators, guards, transportation workers, and contractors working inside these institutions today. Some believe they are helping under difficult circumstances. Others regard it as employment within a structure that continues because …

The quiet art of building trust with patients in pain

Khadija Kane, PT, DPT

Conditions

May 27, 2026

Before I ever stepped into a clinic, I learned diplomacy at the dinner table. I learned how silence could be strategic. How tone traveled faster than words. How disagreements could unfold without becoming rupture. How laughter, timed well, could soften a room. I watched adults negotiate boundaries, expectations, and emotions in real time and internalized something I would not be able to name for years: authority is not volume. It …

RFK’s food pyramid is a win for industry, not health

Martha Rosenberg

Policy

May 27, 2026

When Robert Kennedy Jr. (RFK) was confirmed as HHS director last February, overseeing the CDC, NIH, CMS, and FDA, many worried that modern medicines would become unavailable or scarce.

Instead, industry has received unexpected windfalls and green lights from the new policies. Exhibit A: the exoneration of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) from its well-documented links to cancer and cardiovascular effects. The “timing theories” at Wake Forest that helped turn HRT on …

35 years after choosing psychiatry as a specialty

Farid Sabet-Sharghi, MD

Physician

May 27, 2026

35 years ago, I stood in a hospital hallway and made a decision that would define the rest of my professional life. I was halfway through my internship year in radiation oncology, a field of high-tech linear accelerators and clear-cut protocols, but my heart had drifted toward psychiatry. When I finally voiced my intent to switch, I didn’t find the collegial support we are taught to value in medical training. …

The physician gender pay gap is an engineering problem

Michael Suk, MD, JD, MPH, MBA

Physician

May 27, 2026

The physician gender pay gap persists after adjustment for specialty, hours, and productivity. A 2016 study in JAMA Internal Medicine found female physicians earned roughly $20,000 less per year than male counterparts after extensive controls. Subsequent analyses confirm similar patterns across specialties and career stages. Most of this literature treats the gap as evidence of discrimination. That framing identifies the problem but offers no mechanism and few remedies.

This …

When a code blue on the psychiatry unit ends in a police interview [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

May 26, 2026

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

You hear code blues overhead in a hospital all the time, but one on a psychiatry unit is different. A young patient died after a cardiac event, and what followed looked nothing like …

The hidden cost of GLP-1 insurance coverage mandates

Joseph Zucchi, PA-C

Meds

May 26, 2026

I have spent years caring for patients with obesity, and one of the most meaningful parts of this work is seeing what happens when people finally receive comprehensive, evidence-based treatment. I have watched sleep apnea disappear, blood pressure normalize, joint pain ease, and liver disease reverse. I have watched people who spent years feeling dismissed by the health care system finally start to feel healthy and hopeful again. Those outcomes …

Social determinants of health belong in medical school

Monique Tello, MD

Education

May 26, 2026

There is so much going on in the world right now, which is precisely why I want to talk about a TV show.

Not for escapism. Because this particular show is doing something that medical schools across the country are now being required to stop doing.

The Pitt won Outstanding Drama Series at the 2025 Emmys. Season 2 just aired its finale. Season 3 is already confirmed. And if …

Mission over margin: a community ER doctor’s discipline

Michael Schmitz, DO

Physician

May 26, 2026

The May 2, 2026, New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) Perspective, “From Mission to Margin in Academic Medicine,” articulates an internal struggle I feel frequently. All physicians recognize the formative environment Dr. Vyas describes as something that must be fiercely protected, and his call to action against the commodification of training resonates deeply. As an emergency department physician practicing outside of this setting, I recognize that when we succumb …

Payer contract renegotiation costs independent practices

GetPracticeHelp

Finance

May 26, 2026

A typical commercial payer contract for an independent practice gets signed once, usually under time pressure during credentialing, and then sits untouched for three to five years. The practice receives annual fee schedule updates from the payer, treats them as the new floor, and moves on. The contract is filed and rarely opened again.

This is the diagnostic gap that costs independent practices more recurring revenue than any operational issue except …

Medical malpractice lawsuits cost $56 billion a year

Howard Smith, MD

Physician

May 26, 2026

Medical malpractice is big business in the United States. The only database monitoring medical malpractice is the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB). The NPDB’s annual report claims only 13,000 medical malpractice lawsuits. The NPDB was first established by the Health Care Quality Improvement Act in 1986. It was created by politicians (attorneys) for the express purpose of tracking specific adverse actions against health care practitioners.

Only 13,000 lawsuits are hardly “big …

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