From endocrinologist to writer: a doctor’s second act

Physician
July 16, 2026

For nearly three decades, I lived inside the machinery of medicine.

As a busy endocrinologist, my days revolved around blood sugars, thyroid glands, hormones, weight, lab results, prescription refills, insurance denials, prior authorizations, and the occasional body part someone believed had betrayed them. My schedule was full before I even sat down. There were charts to sign, labs to review, patients to see, and paperwork quietly reproducing in every corner.

Medicine is …

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From endocrinologist to writer: a doctor’s second act

The EHR interoperability gap that costs lives

Health Technology
July 16, 2026

My grandfather might still be here were it not for how electronic health records exist in a silo.

As an incoming stroke alert, the ambulance would soon bring him to a hospital system he had never been to. Unaware that he was on a blood thinner, their well-meaning thrombolysis converted his thrombotic stroke to a devastating hemorrhagic death sentence. But how could something like this even happen?

The electronic health record (EHR) …

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The EHR interoperability gap that costs lives

Remote therapeutic monitoring for the gaps between visits

Health Technology
July 16, 2026

Over my more than 20 years as a pain management physician, I have seen countless patients struggle with chronic pain. Many describe the same frustrations: breakthrough pain that disrupts their days, the challenge of sticking to home exercises or medications, and the anxiety of wondering whether their symptoms are worsening between office visits. Traditional care, with its reliance on scheduled appointments, often leaves gaps that can lead to flare-ups, unnecessary …

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Remote therapeutic monitoring for the gaps between visits

Undercover leadership: influence without the title

Physician
July 16, 2026

Historically, followers have been positioned as subordinate actors, defined more by compliance than by contribution. In contrast, leadership roles are associated with an assumption of power, which may be formal, positional, and at times authoritative. This dichotomy is misleading. Many individuals in formal leadership roles experience constraints in their ability to effect change, as authority alone does not reliably translate into influence. Conversely, we all know individuals who are “not …

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Undercover leadership: influence without the title

What Lindsey Graham’s death reveals about aortic dissection

Conditions and Diseases
July 16, 2026

Senator Lindsey Graham died on Saturday, July 11, at his home in Washington, D.C., at 71. Emergency responders had been called to his home for a cardiac arrest. His office initially described only a “brief and sudden illness”; the next day it released preliminary findings from the District’s chief medical examiner: aortic dissection due to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

Nothing in the public reporting suggests Graham’s care was delayed or that anyone …

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What Lindsey Graham’s death reveals about aortic dissection

Why independent practices sell comes down to billing

Health Technology
July 16, 2026

I’m an engineer, not a physician. For the better part of a year I worked on AI for primary care, and much of that time I spent close to primary care doctors and the people who keep their practices open. I went in assuming the hardest problems would be clinical. They weren’t. The thing I watched wear people down, week after week, was billing.

Not the medicine. The paperwork wrapped around …

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Why independent practices sell comes down to billing

How to fix health care without Medicare for All [PODCAST]

Health Policy
July 15, 2026
YouTube video

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Medicare for All keeps dying in Congress. So what would actually get the major players to agree on universal coverage? Health care journalist Ken Terry returns to lay out a different model, one …

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How to fix health care without Medicare for All [PODCAST]

Why change fails in health care organizations

Health Policy
July 15, 2026

The committee had met six times. The quality data was clear. The care pathway was evidence-based. The physicians in the room nodded. Six months later, nothing had changed.

Not because the initiative was wrong. Not because the physicians were resistant. Because the environment it landed in was never built to hold it.

This is the diagnosis most physician leaders never make, not about their patients, but about their organizations. They identify the …

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Why change fails in health care organizations

Needle exchange programs treat the symptom, not the disease

Conditions and Diseases
July 15, 2026

Needle exchange programs are one of the most well-known, and subsequently most controversial, forms of harm reduction in addiction medicine. These programs provide clean needles and/or syringes for drug users, often in exchange for used needles, in efforts to curb the unsanitary reuse of needles and subsequently decrease the spread of infectious diseases such as hepatitis and HIV. Needle exchange programs, on their own, have been shown to decrease …

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Needle exchange programs treat the symptom, not the disease

Why most AI mental health apps feel like a loop

Health Technology
July 15, 2026

Owning a proprietary infrastructure layer in AI right now is closer to owning a diamond mine than owning a piece of software, yet most mental health apps still choose to live inside the wrapper pool rather than build their own. That observation comes from years spent building at the intersection of artificial intelligence, behavioral psychology, and neuroscience, evaluating every frontier AI model available, both general-purpose and mental-health-specific, until I could …

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Why most AI mental health apps feel like a loop

What should AI do when the blood bank is empty?

Health Technology
July 15, 2026

As physicians, we are taught to diagnose accurately and act quickly. Clinical guidelines assume that if we identify the problem, the health care system will provide the necessary tools to solve it. But what happens when the diagnosis is clear and the treatment simply does not exist?

Recently, while working as an intern physician in South Sudan, I cared for a 9-year-old boy who had traveled from the outskirts of Juba …

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What should AI do when the blood bank is empty?

We can rewrite DNA but not deliver it in time

Conditions and Diseases
July 15, 2026

She was seven months old when her parents first noticed it. Not the peaceful stillness of sleep, but something heavier. Her arms, which had once reached for hanging toys, had grown quiet. Her head, once held with the wobbly determination of a healthy infant, began to drift. The milestones that seemed to be arriving suddenly began moving in reverse.

Weeks later, a child neurologist delivered the diagnosis: spinal muscular atrophy type …

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We can rewrite DNA but not deliver it in time

The hospital that made us cut my child’s care in half

Physician
July 15, 2026

When I was in medical school one day the dean stood up in front of my class holding a cheap, plain pen. He just stood there holding it for a minute without uttering a word. He then very slowly and deliberately said, “This, this pen is the most expensive tool you will ever hold. With this you will during your career spend hundreds of thousands of dollars.” He continued to …

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The hospital that made us cut my child’s care in half

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Why doctors hide their own depression until it nearly breaks them [PODCAST]

Podcast
July 14, 2026
YouTube video

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

For 23 years, an emergency physician stayed calm in the chaos and held the line. Then one night he sat in the hospital parking lot, unable to start his car and drive home. …

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Why doctors hide their own depression until it nearly breaks them [PODCAST]

What medicine gets wrong about names

Physician
July 14, 2026

While shadowing a senior colleague during Mental Health Act assessments in the U.K. a few months ago, I noticed something small but instructive. In his documentation for two different patients we had seen together, he referred to me as Dr followed by two different versions of what he assumed to be my surname.

Later that same day, while introducing me to colleagues who were joining us, he hesitated. Unsure which name …

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What medicine gets wrong about names

When a DNR order becomes a legal liability

Conditions and Diseases
July 14, 2026

A 78-year-old Black woman with advanced heart failure is admitted with shortness of breath. Her admission order set: full code. The next day, after a brief family conversation, a resident changes the order to DNR/DNI. No note explains the discussion. Two days later, she goes into cardiac arrest. The code team hesitates, then proceeds based on an outdated full code order still visible in the chart. The family later sues, …

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When a DNR order becomes a legal liability

What software engineering just taught medicine about AI

Health Technology
July 14, 2026

The most useful AI data for physicians published this year had nothing to do with medicine.

In early June, Anthropic released a report called “When AI builds itself.” One number matters more than the rest. As of May, more than 80 percent of the code merged into the company’s own codebase was written by the very same AI. A typical Anthropic engineer now produces 5.8 times as much code per …

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What software engineering just taught medicine about AI

5 hot takes on AI in health care from a physician CMO

Health Technology
July 14, 2026

Everyone is talking about AI in health care, but I bring a somewhat unusual perspective to the discussion. In addition to serving as chief medical officer for NextGen Healthcare, I am a practicing family physician in a practice owned by a local hospital. I also own and operate a small practice with my wife, which gives me firsthand experience with the realities of independent medicine. On top of that, I …

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5 hot takes on AI in health care from a physician CMO

The question to ask after a hospital says it’s accredited

Health Policy
July 14, 2026

China now has more than 100 JCI-accredited hospitals, the same Joint Commission International standard many U.S. patients recognize from conversations about hospital quality. That number surprises people. It also invites a dangerous shortcut: “JCI-accredited” becomes shorthand for “safe,” “excellent,” or “the best place for my operation.”

Patients deserve a more careful answer.

JCI accreditation matters. I do not dismiss it. But it is not a guarantee of outcomes, technical skill, complication management, …

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The question to ask after a hospital says it’s accredited

When a hit medical drama glorifies physician burnout

Conditions and Diseases
July 14, 2026

I have spent the last few weeks watching a popular television drama set in a chaotic urban emergency department. After more than three decades of practicing psychiatry, I did not expect a network drama to affect me this way. It has felt like a strange form of therapy, vividly resurrecting the ghosts of my formative years and bringing back the exhausting, exhilarating days of medical school and my time as …

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When a hit medical drama glorifies physician burnout

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