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
A physician’s online reputation is important because more patients than ever are going online to research their doctors. They’re going to search engines like Google and Googling their doctor’s names. If you Google my name, for instance, my blog comes up, also my …
Regular readers here are well-versed on the controversy surrounding maintenance of certification (MOC) and the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM).
The story recently made mainstream news, with a comprehensive recap by Newsweek senior writer Kurt Eichenwald: The Ugly Civil War in American Medicine. Go read it.
The ABIM subsequently released a strongly-worded statement. They are clearly not happy with the mainstream media spread …
There’s a lot of angst when it comes to board recertification. The general consensus is that doctors find the requirements onerous, while a more cynical segment calls the whole process a money-making operation for our professional societies and those that profit from recertification courses and materials.
A version of column was published in USA Today on September 14, 2014.
The public can rate and review most things today: books, hotels, and restaurants, to name a few. Even doctors. There are more options than ever where patients can rate their doctors online, and hospitals also routinely survey patients about how satisfied they are with their physicians. But while you’re pretty much …
A version of column was published in USA Today on July 2, 2014.
There are some who think that I’m overpaid as a physician, and that my salary fuels rising health costs. I can understand their point: A May 2014 survey released by the Medical Group Management Association found that internal medicine doctors like myself have a starting median annual salary of $190,000, …
What can physicians learn from the Union Street Guest House?
For those who don’t know, this hotel in New York threatened to fine those who dared write a bad review. The New York Post got wind of this, and needless to say, the fallout has been ugly. The hotel has hundreds of 1-star reviews of Yelp for its efforts.
That’s what President Obama said about the deepening VA health care crisis. It’s also a lightening rod for how partisans want to frame the ongoing health debate.
Some are eager to link the VA scandal to Obamacare, and more broadly, government-run health care.
Others extol the virtues of the VA, holding it as …
Whenever new physician salary data is released, reporters and policy experts often compare doctor salaries in the United States to those of other countries: most notably, France.
A version of column was published in USA Today on April 2, 2014.
Patients in my clinic increasingly use health apps on their mobile devices. Many of these apps track various health metrics, such as weight or calories eaten, while others go a step further and help patients make sense of their symptoms or even suggest diagnoses. It’s estimated that 500 million people worldwide will use a health app by 2015, with the …
In a piece that’s gone viral, internist Daniela Drake writes a strongly-worded column in the Daily Beast about how miserable it is to be a physician:
To be sure many people with good intentions are working toward solving the healthcare crisis. But the answers they’ve come up with are driving up costs and driving …
A version of column was published on March 5, 2014 in the New York Times’ Room for Debate blog.
To remedy our fragmented health system, reformers want to consolidate health care. President Obama, for instance, has praised integrated health systems like the Mayo Clinic as a model for national reform. To that end, the Affordable Care Act drives more hospitals to become more Mayo-like by purchasing physician practices. Today, about 39% …
I recertified back in 2011, and it was an onerous process capped off with a challenging exam. Thankfully I passed, and I’m good until 2022.
Since then, the American Board of Internal Medicine has made maintenance of certification a more “continuous” process, and is sparking some outcry among physicians. Wes Fisher has multiple posts …
A version of column was published in USA Today on January 19, 2014.
Over half of physicians today use electronic medical records, thanks to the federal government spending more than $22 billion dollars incentivizing providers to transition away from paper charts. Supporters of digital records, including President Obama, say they improve patient care and reduce health costs. Having navigated a transition from paper charts to electronic records in my own practice, …
Women screened annually by mammography for 5 years had had a breast cancer mortality hazard of 1.05 compared with the control group during the screening period. During follow-up for a mean of 22 years, the mammography group …
A version of this column was published on January 26, 2014 in the New York Times’ Room for Debate blog.
The president should invite someone crucial to the success of the Affordable Care Act: a practicing primary care physician.
Obamacare admirably expands the opportunity to purchase affordable health insurance to the previously uninsured tens of millions, either by expanding Medicaid or through health exchanges like HealthCare.gov. Yet without a strong primary care backbone, those …
The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment included about 90,000 low-income people and assigned 30,000 of them to Medicaid by lottery. It’s essentially a naturally-occurring randomized controlled trial.
The result seems to have caught the public policy experts by off guard:
“I suspect that the finding will be surprising to many in the policy …
A version of column was published in USA Today on November 20, 2013.
I once diagnosed a patient with high cholesterol, and prescribed him a medicine commonly known as a statin. When I saw him months later for follow-up, he admitted that he didn’t fill the prescription.
“I took red yeast rice capsules instead,” he said.
When I asked him why, he told me that he was wary of statins’ long list of side effects …
The release of the new cholesterol guidelines from the ACC/AHA is big news. It represents a fundamental shift in how we prescribe statin drugs.
As with many sweeping changes, there are some good, and some controversial ideas.
I like removing non-statin cholesterol drugs from the recommendations, such as Zetia. Many haven’t been shown to save lives or decrease cardiovascular events.
