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Are medical malpractice lawsuits cherry-picked data?

Physician

January 7, 2026

Most recognize me for extolling the virtues of deductive reasoning in medical malpractice case review, but I never explain why I am so worked up over medical malpractice. Some would point out, “There are only 17,000 malpractice lawsuits filed per year out of a total of perhaps as many as 40 million lawsuits filed nationwide. Therefore, medical malpractice represents 0.04 percent of all lawsuits filed. What’s the big deal?” …

Accountable care cooperatives: a 2026 vision for U.S. health care

David K. Cundiff, MD

Policy

January 7, 2026

As of January 1, 2026, the American health care system is in crisis. People can no longer afford their health insurance premiums or even to afford to pay for any health insurance. Recently, a 62-year-old self-employed friend of mine saw his premiums increased tenfold in a single cycle. I am lucky that I am over 65 and have Medicare insurance as well as a pension from my employment. Millions of …

The Chief Poisoner: a chemotherapy poem

Ron Louie, MD

Physician

January 7, 2026

An excerpt from What the Physician Whispered.

You are looking at me, little one,
perhaps wondering who I might be.
Even though I might seem friendly,
you seem wary and frightened, not yet
used to seeing strangers and busy places.
Someone thought maybe I might help save you.

I offer to give you poison.

They have not told you, because they do not know
how sick you really are, meaning how close you are
to an unexpected conclusion that …

Read more…

The Chief Poisoner: a chemotherapy poem

Collaborative partnerships save rural health care from collapse [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

January 6, 2026

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

Health care executive Jason Griffin discusses his article “The digital divide in rural health care.” Jason explains how rural providers in the U.S. face critical infrastructure failures and staffing shortages that threaten …

Whole-body MRI screening: political privilege or future of care?

Michael Brant-Zawadzki, MD

Physician

January 6, 2026

The use of MRI body scanning as a preventative tool was highlighted by the president’s recent rope-a-dope with the media. Community practice whole-body MRI businesses now exist, local entrepreneurs directly marketing these services to the public. These scans are not reimbursable by traditional health payers.

The attraction of MRI is its lack of ionizing radiation, as well as its proven sensitivity to a variety of pathologies. Example: Detection of breast cancer …

Why doctors must stop waiting and reclaim their lives

Jessie Mahoney, MD

Physician

January 6, 2026

In medicine, waiting is normalized. We’re trained in it. Praised for it. We learn to delay sleep, meals, vacations, and emotions. We delay joy. Rest. Fulfillment. Relationships. Children.

From the very beginning, we’re taught that waiting is a virtue. That endurance is professionalism. That sacrificing our own needs is a sign of how much we care.

During training, we wait (for sleep, for food, for recognition). We wait for the pager to …

The hidden link between circadian rhythm and physician burnout

Shiv K. Goel, MD

Physician

January 6, 2026

By 11 p.m., my clinic was dark but my brain wasn’t. I found myself scrolling through my schedule for the next day: 22 patient visits, a pile of unsigned notes, two meetings squeezed into “lunch,” and a post-call morning that somehow still started at 7 a.m. None of these tasks were unusual, but what struck me was the growing tightness in my chest and the realization that I had quietly …

Why addiction is no longer just a clinical category

Farid Sabet-Sharghi, MD

Physician

January 6, 2026

Addiction is no longer a clinical category. It has become the cultural baseline.

We used to think of addiction as something that happened to a few vulnerable people who “couldn’t handle” life’s pressures. Now it’s woven into everyday existence. Most of us reach for our phones before we reach for a breath. We chase stimulation without noticing we’re chasing. We live in a world that subtly trains us to crave.

Somewhere along …

Physician on-call compensation: the unpaid labor driving burnout

Corinne Sundar Rao, MD

Physician

January 6, 2026

As an internal medicine physician, I’ve spent years watching one quiet assumption extract more unpaid labor from physicians than anything else in our system. It’s not charting. It’s not meetings. It’s not metrics.

It’s call.

I wrote a post on my LinkedIn page about my thoughts regarding call. It resonated with many physicians, and I received many messages. It became clear that being “on call” is something that is rarely spoken about …

The real cost of U.S. health care dissatisfaction

Way Chiang, BSN, DO

Physician

January 6, 2026

There is a general undercurrent of dissatisfaction with health care in America that is, shall we say, palpable. Many studies and statistical analyses support this notion but I think a broader view is both valuable and less abstract than a data set. We could go measure the angle of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and evaluate the foundational errors, but it doesn’t take that level of granularity to see that …

Artificial intelligence offers a lifeline to overwhelmed clinicians [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

January 5, 2026

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

Physician executive Christina Johns discusses her article “Modernizing health care with AI and workflow.” Christina explains how clinicians in the U.S. are facing unprecedented burnout due to administrative burdens that detract from …

The most venomous sea creatures to avoid

Ashely Alker, MD

Conditions

January 5, 2026

An excerpt from 99 Ways to Die: And How to Avoid Them.

In response to this chapter, I expect to receive a battery of soaking wet letters from infuriated marine biologists, since each species deserves their own chapter, but my editor cut me off.

Flamboyant cuttlefish

The flamboyant cuttlefish is not to be confused with the flamboyant cuddle-fish, which does not exist. The cuttlefish, Metasepia pfefferi, looks like an orchid that ran …

Adult autism assessment: ADOS-4 vs. narrative interviewing

Carrie Friedman, NP

Conditions

January 5, 2026

Over the past decade, there has been a marked rise in adolescents and adults seeking autism evaluations. Many of these individuals are intellectually intact, verbally fluent, and professionally capable, yet have lived for decades with persistent social fatigue, sensory sensitivities, difficulty interpreting unspoken social rules, emotional overwhelm, rigid or all-or-nothing thinking, challenges with transitions, and extensive masking or camouflaging behaviors, all without a diagnosis. When they finally seek clarity, the …

AI in medicine risks: the new Oracle of Delphi?

Harvey Castro, MD, MBA

Tech

January 5, 2026

“The danger isn’t that AI is too powerful; it’s that we stop questioning it.”

Artificial intelligence in medicine is often described as revolutionary, capable of diagnosing disease, predicting deterioration, and automating once-human decisions. But I want to suggest a different lens, one drawn not from technology, but from history.

Let’s go back to ancient Greece.

There, leaders turned to the Oracle of Delphi not for …

Geography as destiny: the truth about U.S. life expectancy disparities

Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA

Policy

January 5, 2026

Every New Year arrives with its familiar rituals. We raise a glass, make a resolution, and offer a toast to things we hope will be different this time around: better habits, better balance, better health. We say “I’ll drink to that” as shorthand for optimism, an easy affirmation that the future is still negotiable and a longer life is possible.

Then along comes a map.

EMR cognitive burden: the hidden cost of documentation

Matthew Ryan, MD, PhD

Physician

January 5, 2026

In basketball, when a player is called for a questionable foul, he may shrug and say: “Ball don’t lie.”

It means the game has a truth of its own. Reality asserts itself. Emergency medicine, unfortunately, rarely works that way.

We once spent most of our time with patients. Now a substantial portion of every shift is spent interacting with a screen, not because we prefer it, but because the system has evolved …

Are mild hypertension guidelines driven by pharma ties?

David K. Cundiff, MD

Conditions

January 5, 2026

In the early 2000s, I included “drugs for mild hypertension” in my book, Money-Driven Medicine: Tests and Treatments That Don’t Work. By 2007, I proposed a Cochrane systematic review of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to settle the debate. Cochrane is widely considered the “gold standard” of evidence-based medicine; its reviews can shift global clinical practice and multibillion-dollar drug markets.

In 2012, Cochrane published the systematic review of Pharmacotherapy for …

The physician emotional toll of delivering bad news

Alexis Lipton, MD

Conditions

January 5, 2026

You can usually taste the excitement in the air during a first visit for pregnancy. It’s palpable. And the evidence for it is everywhere: the nervous fidgeting of hands. Do you place them on your lap or not-so-casually at your side? Paper drape sheet typically is balled up into tiny handfuls for better “grip” on this one-ply provider of modesty. And the quick glances back and forth between soon-to-be parents …

Why midlife men feel lost and exhausted [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

January 4, 2026

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

Emergency physician Kenneth Ro discusses his article “Why midlife men feel unanchored and exhausted.” Kenneth explains why men between 40 and 60 often visit clinics requesting hormone testing when they are actually …

The Dr. Google debate: Building a doctor-patient partnership

Santina Wheat, MD, MPH

Physician

January 4, 2026

If you’ve been practicing medicine for any length of time, you’ve likely felt that familiar moment of overwhelm when a patient walks in with a stack of printouts, a list of 30 questions, or a frustrated statement like, “Well, I did my research.” And if we’re honest, many of us feel our chest tighten just a little. We feel the time pressure. We feel the responsibility. And sometimes, we feel …

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