How merit in medical malpractice drives avoidable costs

Physician
June 23, 2026

Thirteen thousand medical malpractice lawsuits with billions of dollars as either plaintiff verdicts or settlements are reported each year by the National Practitioner Data Bank. Hence there are big bucks to be made and these account for only 33.3 percent of all medical malpractice lawsuits that are litigated. Therefore, there are 40,000 medical malpractice lawsuits, which are litigated. Of these, 27,000 have no awards because they end favorable for the …

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How merit in medical malpractice drives avoidable costs

Physician moral injury is not burnout, it is accuracy

Health Technology
June 23, 2026

At 6:14 on a Monday morning, I open the electronic medical record (EMR) before I open the lights. The clinic does not open for two hours.

The ambient scribe ran on every encounter last week. Most notes are clean. Some need edits I will read between patients. The scribe captures the conversation. The clinical impression is still mine.

Beside the queue, the prior authorization dashboard shows eight denials from last week. Two …

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Physician moral injury is not burnout, it is accuracy

Grieving as a doctor when medicine cannot save your own

Physician
June 23, 2026

There is a particular kind of grief that medicine does not prepare us for: losing someone you love while understanding exactly how hard everyone tried to save them.

My cousin died from cancer only months ago. But to me, she was never simply my cousin. She was my little sister in every way that mattered. Someone I loved instinctively, someone I felt responsible for protecting long before illness entered our lives. …

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Grieving as a doctor when medicine cannot save your own

The brain signal that drives polycystic ovary syndrome

Conditions and Diseases
June 23, 2026

For many years, anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) was viewed primarily as an ovarian marker. Clinicians used it to estimate ovarian reserve, assess follicular activity, and counsel patients regarding reproductive aging and fertility treatment response. In polycystic ovary syndrome, now increasingly reframed as polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS), AMH levels were often recognized as elevated, largely because of the increased number of small arrested follicles characteristic of the condition.

But emerging evidence suggests …

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The brain signal that drives polycystic ovary syndrome

Continuous glucose monitor accuracy and patient trust

Conditions and Diseases
June 23, 2026

As a medical student, I see every day how uncontrolled blood sugar quietly destroys organs. Most of my classmates file this away for exam day, while I’m glued to my CGM app because these sequelae are not hypotheticals for me.

A continuous glucose monitor (CGM) has been the backbone of my daily management since my type 1 diabetes (T1D) diagnosis five years ago. On July 1, 2026, my longtime sensor will …

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Continuous glucose monitor accuracy and patient trust

Why “failed cycle” and “poor responder” wound infertility patients [PODCAST]

Podcast
June 22, 2026
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The words doctors use during fertility care can wound the patient sitting across the desk. “Failed cycle.” “Poor responder.” “Ovarian failure.” For a woman already carrying the grief of a child she has never had, those words can feel like nails in …

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Why “failed cycle” and “poor responder” wound infertility patients [PODCAST]

America on life support: A hospital social worker reflects

Health Policy
June 22, 2026

America feels like the ultimate noncompliant patient.

We stabilize her, patch the wounds, manage the crisis, discharge with recommendations, and within four to eight years she is right back in the ICU on another freedom tangent that destabilizes the entire body of democracy again. The cycle repeats endlessly. Reactive instead of preventive. Fragmented instead of coordinated. Profitable instead of sustainable.

And honestly? The same dysfunction reflected in the country is reflected in …

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America on life support: A hospital social worker reflects

How physician burnout reaches into marriage

Physician
June 22, 2026

Physician burnout is often discussed as if it begins and ends at work. Workload, documentation burden, moral injury, loss of autonomy: These contributors are real. But they don’t exist in isolation.

Physicians don’t shed cognitive load at the end of a shift. The vigilance, decision-making, and emotional regulation required in clinical practice often continue at home, especially inside marriage and family life. Yet relational health is rarely considered a physician well-being …

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How physician burnout reaches into marriage

Clinical AI liability lands on you, not the vendor

Health Technology
June 22, 2026

Last month, I clicked “I agree” on a software update for a tool I use in my clinical practice. I do this all the time. So do you. Most of us treat these agreements like airline safety briefings: just background noise before we get to work.

I don’t do that anymore. Here’s why.

Every AI tool coming into psychiatric practice, like the ambient scribe, documentation assistant, or the clinical decision support feature …

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Clinical AI liability lands on you, not the vendor

Denial rate segmentation finds your real revenue leak

Physician Finance
June 22, 2026

Slow collections in an independent practice are usually treated as a billing problem. The vendor gets called. The workflow gets reviewed. The staff gets reorganized. The denial rate gets a quick check and is reported as a single number for the month, something between 8 and 12 percent. That headline number, by itself, is the wrong metric. A 10 percent denial rate that hides which payers are rejecting, which CPT …

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Denial rate segmentation finds your real revenue leak

3 pharma conflicts of interest hiding in plain sight

Medications
June 22, 2026

1. Medical journals are going the way of newspapers, as in “extinct”

Who remembers newspapers? Pre-smartphone compendiums of world and local events on paper that required reporters to investigate and inform?

When newspapers lost their classified ads, their financial fulcrum, to Craigslist, they lost their readers and reporters. No one could pay staff or printing or distribution without readers and advertisers, and the business model is otiose, especially because of the printing …

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3 pharma conflicts of interest hiding in plain sight

Anchoring bias killed my father inside a stroke center

Physician
June 22, 2026

“Eighty-six-year-old man dies of a stroke.”

It is the kind of sentence medicine writes cleanly, almost mercifully, as though a life can be folded into a diagnosis and quietly filed away. I have read sentences like that in charts, discharge summaries, death certificates. But this time, the man was my father.

His name was Herbert Nelson. Herb. Herbie. Brother Nelson. Elder Nelson. Mr. Nelson. Daddy.

He did not die alone in some forgotten …

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Anchoring bias killed my father inside a stroke center

Dignity in medicine starts with how we are seen

Physician
June 22, 2026

Years ago, I read about the sapeurs of Congo, men living with limited means who spent extraordinary care, money, and intention on clothing, color, elegance, and style. At first glance, it can seem irrational. It is not.

Dress, for them, is not vanity. It is dignity. It is self-definition. It is a refusal to let circumstance have the final word on identity. I have been thinking about that today.

Today is Juneteenth.

Today, …

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Dignity in medicine starts with how we are seen

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A hard week is not a verdict on a physician’s career

Physician
June 22, 2026

It was a hard week.

A colleague was suddenly gone, thirteen years of patients, of history, of complicated cases, and just like that, the rest of us were absorbing it. The calls. The messages. The patients showing up at my clinic needing someone. My own patients waiting longer. Notes to review that weren’t mine. Work landing on my desk that nobody planned for and nobody asked me about.

I kept my charts …

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A hard week is not a verdict on a physician’s career

Underage gambling thrives on offshore betting sites

Conditions and Diseases
June 22, 2026

Offshore online gambling companies, operating from jurisdictions with lax oversight, have built a business model that thrives on easy access for minors while evading meaningful U.S. regulations. These platforms often rely on superficial age verification that fails to protect vulnerable youth, leading to widespread underage participation, addiction, and profound suffering for victims and their families.

Inadequate age verification: a sham that enables harm

A core failure lies in the …

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Underage gambling thrives on offshore betting sites

Who are you when the white coat is off?

Physician
June 22, 2026

Dear colleague,

I know exactly who you are. You are the one who has not missed a deadline since the third grade. You are the one who treats “triple board-certified” like a minimum requirement and “regional medical director” like a starting line. You are the one who has spent twenty years mastering the architecture of everyone else’s survival, while your own foundation is quietly crumbling.

But I have a question for you, …

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Who are you when the white coat is off?

The emotional weight of choosing food allergy treatment

Conditions and Diseases
June 21, 2026

For years, food allergy families like mine were told the same thing: “Avoid the allergen and carry epinephrine.” Now, many walk into allergy clinics and hear something entirely different: “There are treatments that can help your child.”

What follows is often overwhelm, not relief.

As a psychologist working with the food allergy community, and as a parent who has sought out those treatments for my son, I have watched families try to …

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The emotional weight of choosing food allergy treatment

How to use patient wearable data in cardiology visits

Health Technology
June 21, 2026

A patient handed me his phone in clinic last week. He was 58, a runner, no known cardiovascular disease. “Doc, my WHOOP says my recovery has been in the red for two weeks. Should I be worried?”

Ten years ago, I would have politely deflected and ordered an echo if I felt the visit needed a deliverable. Today, I look at his screen. Because his wearable was telling me something his …

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How to use patient wearable data in cardiology visits

How AI is reshaping applied behavior analysis care

Conditions and Diseases
June 21, 2026

Most applied behavior analysis (ABA) practices are not lacking data. If anything, they have too much of it. The challenge is pulling it together to get a complete picture of client care, determining next steps, and maintaining compliance. Information lives in different, siloed systems. Getting the information you need often means exporting reports, manually reconciling numbers, and trying to connect the dots. By the time that work is done, the …

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How AI is reshaping applied behavior analysis care

What the polycystic ovary syndrome name change means

Conditions and Diseases
June 21, 2026

For decades, millions of women have walked into clinics, described a complex web of physical and emotional symptoms, and walked out with a diagnosis of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). This condition affects an estimated 170 million women globally during their reproductive years. It is one of the most common endocrine disorders in women, affecting one in eight globally. Yet, the name we have used for it is fundamentally flawed.

The term …

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What the polycystic ovary syndrome name change means

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