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Banu Symington, MD

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Banu Symington, MD

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Banu Symington is a hematology-oncology physician.

Profit vs. patients in the U.S. health care system

Banu Symington, MD
Physician
December 18, 2025

Illness is inevitable, and medical care can be expensive. The U.S. is the only developed nation without some form of universal health care. Instead, it relies on a for-profit system in which insurance companies often seek ways to reduce costs, sometimes by delaying or denying coverage for services. These delays can include requirements such as prior authorization or peer-to-peer reviews for standard, guideline-directed treatments. This process takes up health care …

Read more…

Profit vs. patients in the U.S. health care system

A cancer doctor’s warning about the future of medicine

Banu Symington, MD
Physician
October 13, 2025

I am a cancer doctor.

It took me many years to become one and while I paid for my medical school tuition, my residency and fellowship training was partially subsidized by government funds for general medical education. Every residency and fellowship is partially funded this way because the government recognizes the need for doctors. I have also had an NIH funded basic research lab where I did research that has contributed …

Read more…

A cancer doctor’s warning about the future of medicine

A physician’s letter: Safeguarding patient well-being by opposing off-site infusions

Banu Symington, MD
Physician
August 27, 2023

I am writing to vehemently argue against out-of-office infusions for my patients. There are many general reasons for this, which I will enumerate. There are also often patient-specific reasons, such as frailty, chronic noncompliance with recommendations (which do not reach the level of a psychiatric issue but which make offsite infusions less safe), and patient-perceived intolerance of infusions (even if we see no objective signs of a reaction). While these …

Read more…

A physician’s letter: Safeguarding patient well-being by opposing off-site infusions

No wonder doctors feel like hamsters running on an exercise wheel to nowhere

Banu Symington, MD
Physician
August 28, 2022

Burnout. We define, measure, and talk about it endlessly but do little to fix it. Unchecked, it can lead to medical mistakes, career dissatisfaction, early retirement, provider suicide, and excess costs. With the recent pandemic, the public has become more aware of it, but action to fix it is still lagging.

Feeling underappreciated, feeling one’s work is meaningless, feeling powerless to make changes, and feelings of moral injury are but a …

Read more…

No wonder doctors feel like hamsters running on an exercise wheel to nowhere

Why do we treat psychiatric illness different from other illness?

Banu Symington, MD
Conditions
February 25, 2018

I recently had the opportunity to be the informal medical navigator for a friend with an acute psychiatric crisis. This previously “normal” friend lives alone, is a high-functioning professional and was unable to sleep, to eat, to finish a coherent thought or to carry on his business for several weeks.

I was called to help after an embarrassing public meltdown. The first problem was finding a doctor who would deal with …

Read more…

Why do we treat psychiatric illness different from other illness?

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  • Most Popular

  • Past Week

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      Olumuyiwa Bamgbade, MD | Physician
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      Shuchita Gupta, MD | Physician
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      The Podcast by KevinMD | Podcast
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