Post Author: Kevin Pho, MD
Kevin Pho is a practicing, board-certified internal medicine physician, a national media commentator, co-author of the book, Establishing, Managing, and Protecting Your Online Reputation: A Social Media Guide for Physicians and Medical Practices, and an acclaimed keynote speaker. He is founder and editor, KevinMD.com, and founder, Physician Speaking by KevinMD.
These perspectives define his unique social media journey, and his story has brought audiences to their feet.
Kevin shares his story nationwide with both clinicians and non-clinicians, and regularly keynotes major conferences.
Kevin built the KevinMD platform from scratch in 2004. It now receives over 3 million monthly page views, and exceeds 250,000 followers on Facebook and Twitter. Kevin was named the web’s top social media influencer in health care and medicine. The New York Times called KevinMD “a highly-coveted publishing place for doctors and patients.” Forbes called KevinMD a “must-read health blog.” And CNN named @KevinMD one of its five recommended Twitter health feeds.
Kevin’s signature keynote, “Connect and be heard: Make a difference in heath care with social media,” takes your audience through Kevin’s social media journey since 2004. With video, audio, and an emphasis on storytelling, he inspires audiences to use social media and be health care influencers in the following ways:
- Strengthen the doctor-patient relationship
- Make your voice heard in the health reform conversation
- Turn the tide against clinician burnout
- Define an online reputation
- Share your health care story
- Connect with mainstream media
- Respond to clinician rating sites
Kevin is the founder of Physician Speaking by KevinMD and is available for speaking opportunities. Please contact us for inquiries.
Kevin Pho is a practicing, board-certified internal medicine physician, a national media commentator, co-author of the book, Establishing, Managing, and Protecting Your Online Reputation: A Social Media Guide for Physicians and Medical Practices, and an acclaimed keynote speaker. He is founder and editor, KevinMD.com, and founder, Physician Speaking by KevinMD.
These perspectives define his unique social media journey, and his story has brought audiences to their feet.
Kevin shares his story nationwide with both clinicians and non-clinicians, and regularly keynotes major conferences.
Kevin built the KevinMD platform from scratch in 2004. It now receives over 3 million monthly page views, and exceeds 250,000 followers on Facebook and Twitter. Kevin was named the web’s top social media influencer in health care and medicine. The New York Times called KevinMD “a highly-coveted publishing place for doctors and patients.” Forbes called KevinMD a “must-read health blog.” And CNN named @KevinMD one of its five recommended Twitter health feeds.
Kevin’s signature keynote, “Connect and be heard: Make a difference in heath care with social media,” takes your audience through Kevin’s social media journey since 2004. With video, audio, and an emphasis on storytelling, he inspires audiences to use social media and be health care influencers in the following ways:
- Strengthen the doctor-patient relationship
- Make your voice heard in the health reform conversation
- Turn the tide against clinician burnout
- Define an online reputation
- Share your health care story
- Connect with mainstream media
- Respond to clinician rating sites
Kevin is the founder of Physician Speaking by KevinMD and is available for speaking opportunities. Please contact us for inquiries.
The average medical school debt today, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, is $156,456.
The United States is the only country in the world were future doctors have to bear such a financial burden of their education. That places significant strain on any relationship involving an American medical student.
Recently, there was an interesting piece in the New York Times discussing this very issue. The article profiled a female Read more…
What’s one of the biggest culprits for the rise of unnecessary medical testing?
Preoperative evaluation.
Before most patients undergo surgery or an invasive procedure, they are normally sent to their primary care physicians for a “preoperative evaluation.” This is a visit to determine if they are medically stable enough to undergo the operation.
Tests like bloodwork, an EKG, or a chest x-ray are frequently ordered. For those with suspicion of coronary artery …
Read more…
The Mayo Clinic has always been at the forefront of the social media and health care intersection, and is the first institution to have an official Center for Social Media.
When they recently announced the invited first 13 members of their Advisory Board for the Mayo Clinic Center for Health Care Social Media, the first thing I noticed that there were zero physicians, and few with clinical experience.
What a slap in …
Read more…
Why are doctors so bad at predicting how long a patient has to live?
That’s the interesting question posed by John Schumann, an internal medicine physician who blogs at GlassHospital, recently in Slate.
There are many reasons why doctors evade the question of prognosis:
We don’t like to be wrong; we don’t want to take away hope for survival or good quality of life in the time that remains; and we just …
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Nothing polarizes the heath care debate more than defensive medicine. A recent study from Health Affairs will only add more fuel to the fire.
Here’s what I wrote a couple of years ago in USA Today: “When you consider that rampant testing is a major driver of escalating health care dollars, addressing defensive medicine should be a primary goal of cost containment.”
Is that still true?
Well, yes and no.
MedPage Today summarizes …
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Concierge care is often discussed as a way for primary care to survive in the United States.
Pauline Chen talks about the concept in her recent New York Times column, discussing the well-known issues involving “two-tiered” care that boutique practices inevitably bring.
But what I found fascinating was how Tufts University utilized the concept.
Here’s how it works:
Since 2004, the primary care physicians at Tufts Medical Center have offered patients the option …
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MobiHealthNews released a comprehensive infographic on physician use of the iPad, a distillation of their report on the issue.
The iPad has been covered previously on this site. The form factor holds tremendous potential, as this Dartmouth physician noted, “the iPad offers a ‘low profile’ that doesn’t seem intimidating to patients during exams.” That’s especially important as it can allow doctors to maintain eye contact with their …
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The following op-ed was published on July 18th, 2010 in USA Today.
A new patient recently said he was referred to me after his last doctor had left medicine. His old doctor always looked unhappy and burned out, he noted.
Burnout affects more than half of doctors, according to researchers at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. Beyond mere job dissatisfaction, these doctors are emotionally exhausted to the point …
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Did you know that international medical graduates account for 30% of primary care doctors in the United States?
And with American medical graduates continuing to shy away from the field, that number will undoubtedly go up.
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Recent news stories, like Pauline Chen’s New York Times column, have focused on a landmark study comparing patient outcomes of doctors educated in the United States versus those …
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Abraham Verghese is a professor of medicine at Stanford University, and one of the most articulate physician-writers today.
He recently wrote an op-ed highlighting primary care’s plight, and focuses on the scarcity of time:
The science of medicine has never been more potent – incredible advances and great benefits realized in the treatment of individual diseases – yet the public perception of us physicians is often one of a harried individual more …
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The hospital is never a quiet place.
Walk through the wards on a typical day, and you’ll hear a cacophony of alarms, bells, and other tones coming from both computers and medical equipment.
American Medical News recently discussed so-called “alarm fatigue.” They cite a study showing find that “16,934 alarms sounded in [a medical] unit during an 18-day period.”
That’s astounding, and for those who are wondering, that’s about 40 alarms an hour.
It’s …
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I’ve written previously that many doctors are finding the physical exam obsolete, and are favoring more technologically advanced, and expensive, tests.
In fact, I alluded to traditional physical exam advocates as “arguing for staying with a horse and buggy when cars are rapidly becoming available.”
In a recent piece from the New York Times, internist Danielle Ofri says we need to look past the lack of evidence supporting …
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In their most recent piece at Slate, emergency physicians Zachary F. Meisel and Jesse M. Pines tackle the issue of bouncebacks. That is, the re-admission of recently discharged hospitalized patients.
They bring up good some good points, and point out that, until recently, hospitals really didn’t have any incentive to reduce bouncebacks:
… hospitals have never had a compelling reason to try to prevent bouncebacks. Hospitals are typically paid a flat sum …
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A recent study from the Annals of Internal Medicine found that doctors often discounted a patient’s social situation when making a medical diagnosis.
Lead researcher Saul Weiner “arranged to send actors playing patients into physicians’ offices and discovered that errors occurred in 78 percent of cases when socioeconomic concerns were a significant factor.”
Evan Falchuk, commenting on the results, provides some context:
It’s hard to expect even the most gifted clinician, …
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I recently wrote about the hidden dangers of physician social networks, and how private posts can potentially become public at a later date.
With the recent controversy surrounding former Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel and Journalist in mind, I commented that,
passionate, controversial debate is frequent on Sermo, along with discussion of patient cases. Part of what makes the site so provocative and insightful is the fact that the conversations …
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Say the words, “Patient-centered medical home,” and you’re bound to get a variety of opinions.
On this blog alone, there are a variety of guest pieces critical of the effort, saying it does not increase patient satisfaction, nor does it save money.
And that’s not good news for its advocates, who are pinning primary care’s last hopes on the model.
Medical homes hit the mainstream media recently, …
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As more students participate in social media, like Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, Bryan Vartabedian asks, “Does Twitter Belong on Your Medical School Application?”
Great question.
I’d say that the majority of doctors and medical schools fail to see the utility of social media, and are generally behind the curve. Indeed, as Dr. Vartabedian writes, “some academics, after all, see social media as a waste of time.”
But that’s going to change. With sites …
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Recently, JAMA published a study concluding that doctors are hesitant to report incompetent physicians or those who were impaired.
According to the article,
more than a third of docs don’t think they’re responsible for reporting those who aren’t fit to practice, according to the results just published in JAMA. And only 69 percent of the docs who knew about an impaired or incompetent colleague reported them.
To those who advocate that the medical …
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Physician salaries are always a sensitive topic.
A common view among health reforms is that doctors, in general, are paid too much. Various progressive pundits point to statistics showing that American doctors are the highest paid in the world.
For many specialists, that may be true. But not for primary care.
A recent Tweet by Ves Dimov pointed me to an article from the UK, stating that primary care doctors working in …
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There’s little question that medical school debt is rising rapidly, affecting the career choice of medical students.
It’s one of the main reasons why the disparity between the number of specialists and primary care doctors is widening. There have been a variety of proposed solutions — most recent of which are medical schools completely subsidizing their tuition. I think that’s a good step forward, but so far, has only been …
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