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How patient advocacy in the hospital can prevent a stroke

Conditions and Diseases

June 10, 2026

As someone who spent years advocating for my medically complex son, I’m often asked how to do it. What advocacy looks like. How to push back. The truth is, advocacy itself isn’t that complicated. At its core, it’s standing up for what you know is right, and refusing to accept an unacceptable status quo. I believe the hard part is taking up space. Challenging people and systems that aren’t used …

The hidden link between childhood trauma and addiction

Ronke Lawal, MBA

Conditions and Diseases

June 10, 2026

There is a particular cruelty in growing up, not the ordinary kind involving responsibility or the poetic loss of innocence. The cruelty is this: A child can survive something they do not yet have the language to name, carry it quietly for decades, and only begin to suffer its full weight once they have developed the cognitive architecture to understand what was done to them. The horror is not concurrent …

Early Alzheimer’s detection is now a treatment decision

Dr. Emer MacSweeney

Conditions and Diseases

June 10, 2026

For decades, an Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis has been viewed as simply a confirmation of a disease, not an opportunity for treatment. Typically, patients or family members would notice subtle changes in memory. Once these symptoms reached the point where concern was raised to a physician, and referrals were made, often leading to months of waiting to see a neurologist, opportunities for even symptomatic treatment were significantly smaller. This diagnosis-to-treatment gap …

Branding a medical practice is not vanity, it is trust

Ashley Gay

Physician Finance

June 10, 2026

Most people find a new doctor by asking their friends and family who they go to. When you’ve got a solid referral or testimonial, a type of pseudo-trust is established.

But when a person does not live in the same area, or doesn’t have a referral from someone they trust, they start searching online. They compare websites, look at photos, read some pages, and possibly see the photos of the waiting …

Beyond 5 percent quit rates: nicotine harm reduction

Julie K. Gunther, MD

Conditions and Diseases

June 10, 2026

In 2021, I was asked, “If a patient is 200 pounds overweight and loses 100 pounds, would you tell them that’s not good enough?” It was a compelling question. In the words of my favorite surgical attending, we don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. We would celebrate that win, and keep going.

The next question stopped me: “Do you have strategies to help smokers make similar incremental change?”

I didn’t. …

5 ways hospitals can reduce medical malpractice claims

Colleen Naglee, MD, JD

Conditions and Diseases

June 10, 2026

I don’t know any physicians who aren’t worried about being sued. It is unfortunately very common in today’s world, with some specialties like neurosurgery and obstetrics disproportionately experiencing higher lawsuits. The fear of litigation is not benign, and health employers need to reduce litigation and better support staff.

Recently there has also been a trend with the so-called “nuclear verdict.” These are very costly jury verdicts that can devastate a physician …

Why AI cybersecurity is now a patient safety issue [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

June 9, 2026

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

Most physicians using AI on patient data have no idea what the real security risks are. Francisco M. Torres, an interventional physiatrist, and Purab Patel, a medical student with a programming background, argue that cybersecurity has become a patient safety issue in …

The 15-provider road to vestibular disorder diagnosis

Bridgett Wallace, DPT, PT

Conditions and Diseases

June 9, 2026

That question came to me, again, at the end of a community webinar I gave recently for individuals living with vestibular disorders. It is the most common question I am asked when I speak to community audiences. It is asked without anger. It is asked the way someone asks a question they have lived with for years.

“Why don’t more health care providers know more about dizziness?”

I owe that question an …

The one question that measures physician integrity

Dr. Saad S. Alshohaib

Physician

June 9, 2026

There comes a night, somewhere near the end of a long career, when a physician sits alone with himself after the corridors have emptied and the pagers have gone quiet. He turns the years over in his mind, the patients who lived and the ones who did not, the diagnoses made in time and the ones missed, the easy hours and the impossible ones, and he discovers that the question …

Xenotransplantation ethics tests our moral frameworks

Chinmeri Nwuba

Conditions and Diseases

June 9, 2026

Xenotransplantation, the transplantation of animal organs, tissues, or cells into humans, has rapidly transitioned from speculative science to a clinical reality. It is driven by advances in genetic engineering, particularly CRISPR-mediated modification of donor animals. On the bright side, the field now offers a plausible solution to one of modern medicine’s most persistent crises: the global shortage of transplantable human organs. Recent milestones, including first-in-human pig heart and kidney xenotransplants, …

3 Air Force leadership lessons from three commanders

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

Physician

June 9, 2026

During my Air Force years, I served under three commanders with three very different personalities. One was methodical and procedural. One was operational and instinctive. One was strategic and future-focused. They disagreed about many things, but they agreed about one: they wanted to retain me. All three wrote it in my Officer Evaluation Reports (OERs).

At the time, I didn’t think much about it. I was young, busy, and focused on …

Narrative medicine is what AI in medicine cannot replace

Muhammad Mohsin Fareed, MD

Physician

June 9, 2026

Something that I had been resisting tacitly for a while, eventually happened last week. As I was supposed to be all ears towards a patient, my concentration drifted towards the screen. The cursor blinked, translating his words into codes the system would accept as symptoms, durations, and checkboxes. When I looked back at him, he ebbed. The story had been interrupted, and I wasn’t sure I could retrieve it.

Modern medicine …

20 years inside a Medicare Advantage insurer, and who actually pays [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

June 8, 2026

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

Medicare Advantage covers more than half of seniors, and the debate over what it really costs is stuck in two camps. Timothy Bulat, a senior consulting actuary who spent nearly two decades leading Medicare Advantage analytics inside a major insurer, raises a …

Fear of cancer recurrence is a human response, not a flaw

Jae L. Ross, PsyD

Conditions and Diseases

June 8, 2026

In oncology and survivorship care, one of the most common (and often least visible) experiences patients carry is fear of recurrence.

For many people, finishing treatment brings a sense of relief. But it can also bring something quieter that lingers. A watchfulness. A heightened sensitivity to the body. A subtle shift in how the future feels.

For others, this way of thinking begins earlier (at diagnosis, during treatment, or in the spaces …

The attention economy is starving public health

Paul Dranichnikov, MD, PhD

Physician

June 8, 2026

We are living in an era where attention, not information, is the scarce resource. And what we pay attention to (not what we claim to value) reveals the architecture of our priorities.

Consider a few comparisons that, though deliberately absurd, tell a deeper truth. We now have more Marvel movies than major classes of antibiotics. The world produces more aspiring pop singers than there are widely used chemotherapy regimens. Strangely enough, …

Mental health ghost networks are badly hurting patients

Steve Cohen, JD

Conditions and Diseases

June 8, 2026

Daria D. learned how dangerous a “ghost network” is while fearing that her son would kill himself. Daria was desperate to find a psychiatrist to help her teenage son, who was suicidal. She called more than a dozen doctors listed in her insurance company’s provider directory. Half were listed with telephone numbers that did not work. The other half said they did not take her insurance or could not see …

Why your overhead percentage is the wrong benchmark

GetPracticeHelp

Physician Finance

June 8, 2026

In primary care, practice overhead is commonly described as 50 to 60 percent of collections. That range is repeated in continuing education, in vendor marketing, and in the operational frameworks new practice owners are handed when they ask what normal looks like. The range is not wrong. It is just too broad to be operationally useful.

A primary care practice running at 58 percent overhead might be perfectly stable, undercompensating its …

The opioid crackdown is harming chronic pain patients

Bill Bauer, MD, PhD

Conditions and Diseases

June 8, 2026

I once cared for a patient I’ll call Maria, a middle-aged professional with severe spinal disease and years of stable function on a carefully monitored opioid regimen. She’d never lost a prescription, never shown signs of misuse, and passed every urine drug screen. Then her clinic was acquired by a large health system, and new policies arrived with a single message: cut opioid doses or risk scrutiny. Within months, Maria’s …

ED boarding fails patients before treatment begins

Sarah Whaley

Conditions and Diseases

June 8, 2026

I am writing this from a hospital bed, though it took far longer than it should have to get here.

I was directly admitted by a surgical team for treatment of a post-surgical infection. The expectation in such cases is straightforward: admission to an inpatient unit for monitoring, treatment, and recovery. Instead, I spent hours in a secondary waiting room, followed by placement in a chair in a shared emergency department …

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