“Inaccurate patient records aren’t just an inconvenience. They’re a risk. The EHR might speak for the patient when they cannot speak for themselves, and if it’s wrong, it’s a serious liability.
In lieu of any system-wide improvements to EHRs, I try to be vigilant. I ask the medical assistants to review the medication list …
When records are wrong, patients are at risk [PODCAST]
How can you know that science done quickly during a crisis is good science?
This question has taken on new relevance with the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. Researchers developed vaccines in under a year — easily breaking the previous record of four years. But that pace of development may be part of the reason about 1 in 7 unvaccinated adults in the U.S. say Read more…
Here’s what it takes to do good science under pressure
I am a physician at a critical access hospital. I manage both the ER and inpatient service and am the only physician in the hospital. This is the reality for many rural hospitals across the country. With no urgent care in town, and with primary care offices few and far between, these hospitals see everything.
We see patients with ailments from a minor finger laceration to those with septic shock from …
Is EMTALA really protecting patients during COVID?
The calls started during dinner.
“I forgot to get my med refilled, and now I’m out. Can you call it in?”
“I’m reading these colonoscopy prep instructions, and I see I was supposed to stop eating seeds a week ago. Should I still take the prep?”
“I haven’t had a bowel movement in three days. What should I do?”
The calls continued during the night. As usual, there were a lot of bowel prep …
It’s time for physicians to stop taking patient calls at night
“The reality of the last two years is that almost all of us have experienced some mental health disorder symptoms, and that mental and physical health are equally important components of overall health. We call these subclinical symptoms, or symptoms that are there but that don’t meet full criteria for …
Mental health and the balance between technology and the human touch [PODCAST]
As a family medicine physician, I am not sure about a whole lot as we turn into the third year of pandemic living. I can’t give you a decent prognosis of where Omicron is going to take us or how many it will take from us. I am not even sure of the public health approach at this moment where COVID seems to outsmart us repeatedly. (A reminder that this …
We need each other, as COVID pulls us apart
In the ongoing saga of the pandemic, there is the debate whether to wear a mask or not. These are physical masks that temporarily hide our face, but we all wear another type of mask, a metaphorical mask. These are the masks we put on to present who we want the world to see. People who are referred to as having “high functioning autism” often put on the greatest masks …
Autism spectrum disorder and the masks we wear
“A hundred years ago, women lived one year longer than men, but now they live five years longer than men. And things are getting worse. Currently, the lifespan of men in the U.S. is declining due to alcohol, opioids, and suicide. These trends need to change.
I take care of men. …
Men’s health is a catastrophe. Here’s how we can help. [PODCAST]
I have been following the controversy surrounding the approval of the new Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab with great interest. Until a year and a half ago, I worked as a neurologist in an adult general neurology clinic. Many of my patients had dementia. While I thoroughly enjoyed seeing these patients and their family members, I often felt helpless when treating them. When I left clinical practice to explore a non-clinical career …
A neurologist grapples with aducanumab
As a working mom of three kids and an emergency medicine physician, I have had to embrace home workouts since before the pandemic. I am a huge Peloton fan! In December of 2020, Robin Arzón, VP of fitness and an instructor for Peloton, partnered with Shonda Rhimes (creator of Grey’s Anatomy) to do a series about Rhimes’ book Year of Yes.
The power of saying yes. In 2020, just pre-pandemic, I …
Setting boundaries and the power of saying no
The percentage of teens using illicit substances dropped significantly in 2021 as the pandemic forced them into isolation from friends, classrooms, and extracurricular activities. Alcohol, marijuana, and nicotine vaping – the most commonly used substances by teens all showed declines from 2020.
These findings were reported by a Monitoring the Future survey conducted by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.
The survey is given annually to students …
The pandemic drives a decline in teen substance abuse
Don’t look in: No, this isn’t a typo, it’s the sentiment many of my colleagues and I feel right about now. After a long stretch of shifts over New Year’s, I needed a mental break, so I logged into my trusty Netflix account and front and center was Don’t Look Up, the Leonardo DiCaprio dark satire about a comet hurtling towards earth (spoiler alert) and humanities failed efforts to take …
Don’t look in. What you will see is uncomfortable.
“Studies show that those physicians with negative online reviews were more often scored poorly due to non-physician specific causes. In my career, I’ve read comments from patients that said they were not satisfied with their provider because they didn’t like the color of the walls in the exam room. …
Patient surveys: the quest for positive reviews [PODCAST]
Like most parents, my children are my world. I would do anything to protect them and keep them healthy. It is Darwinian. Instinctual.
Most of us get by with a combination of sage advice from generations past interspersed with a “know better do better” approach. Personally and professionally, I encountered this duality pretty quickly. In March 2016, my husband and I hopped on a plane to Los Angeles with our 4-month-old …
5 science-backed strategies an allergist-mom is using to protect her family’s health
As a nation, we have committed to a social imperative for education — an aspirational vision, based on its broad social benefit, for universal literacy and numeracy of our citizens — as manifested in our systems of mandatory K-12 education.
While this vision remains a work-in-progress — there are significant inequities and differences of opinion as to the process and content of education — the shared value of, and responsibility for, …
The social imperative of health
As an attorney who negotiates physician employment agreements with hospitals on a daily basis, I have developed a healthy skepticism about mindset of hospital executives. It is painfully obvious that most executives in our hospital systems have a business school mindset, that views physicians as necessary (albeit expendable) cogs in the magnificent machine that is the hospital.
Executives can hardly be blamed for this attitude. Physicians will always …
Are hospitals evil? A physician contract lawyer explains.
“Doctor, you’ve been duped,” she said as she took slow, careful breaths of oxygen from the heated high-flow nasal cannula.
These were definitely not the words I was expecting to hear. Responding to the perplexed look on my face, she added, “I mean I can tell that you are well-intentioned and a good person. But Bill Gates and the Minnesota Department of Health have altered the databases. Bill Gates wants half …
It is no secret that telehealth adoption has skyrocketed as a result of the pandemic, and because of that, many health systems are in the process of shifting to a virtual-first hybrid care model. Unfortunately, video visits, which most will equate with telehealth, have done little to help with the age-old issues of patient access and convenience, provider efficiency, and rising health care costs.
Patients often encounter the same frustrations during …
Debunking the myths around asynchronous care
“All the faceless young men who are brought to his operating table, prepped and draped, broken and bleeding, are finding their experience of war bears little resemblance to their reveries of war. They should have known better. At corner taverns in Chicago, Albuquerque, and Murphysboro, there were tired veterans with …
Lessons in caring too much from a fictional physician [PODCAST]
An excerpt from Rheum for Improvement: The Evolution of a Health-Care Advocate.
Their expert witness, “Dr. Z,” was simply a hired gun willing to do their bidding for a price. He had completed only one year of a rotating internship in family practice in the 1960s. He had not done a residency and had no rheumatology training. He had not seen …
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