This week at work, I had a patient in the hospital who had been through a pretty challenging illness, and he was going to have to be discharged to a skilled nursing facility (SNF) to rehab for a few weeks. Sadly, SNFs in my area do not currently allow any visitors due to the pandemic. The patient is very close to his daughter, who lives out of state, and she …
Sometimes structural racism surfaces in a way that even those of us who would like to be “color-blind” cannot help but see.
In the spring of 2020, the video-recorded death of George Floyd (who was Black) at the hands of a law enforcement officer (who was white) brought millions of witnesses to the kind of hostility that is all-too-familiar to individuals of color. Individuals, many non-white, took to our nation’s capital …
Disparities in rural health care have been well established with respect to socioeconomic status, race, and geography. COVID-19 brought these disparities to the surface within most rural communities in the United States, highlighting the limited access to health care specialists and subspecialists.
As an otolaryngologist, I have had the privilege and unique opportunity of serving two different communities: Chicago’s city dwellers and …
In recent years, the divide between rural and urban areas of the United States has become more pronounced, with sharply divergent views on both social and economic policies. The results of this latest election show starkly that the divide persists, and indicate that the institutions that shape our nation are not successfully representing all portions of society.
One of those institutions appears to be medicine. A sign of this is how the public …
As communities of color continue to be disproportionately decimated by COVID-19 and the brutal impact of racism and other longstanding systemic inequalities, academic medicine finds itself at a critical inflection point in defining its role in addressing social injustices not only for its patients but also for its academic workforce. In the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing, many medical schools and teaching hospitals released statements condemning racial injustice and vowed …
A recent op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal, “Is There a Doctor in the White House? Not if You Need an M.D.,” has sparked a lot of controversy and immense backlash. The author Joseph Epstein, a former Northwestern University professor, first addresses the future First Lady as “kiddo” and continues with “’Dr. Jill Biden’ sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a …
Starting on January 1, 2021, clinicians across the country can expect new Medicare rules on billing, documentation, and payment for evaluation and management (E/M) services — or common office/outpatient visits – to go into effect. These historic changes will give clinicians more flexibility in how they document visits in their patients’ medical record, reduce their paperwork burden and give them more time to spend with patients. With over 750,000 clinicians …
Oh, Canada! Every presidential election cycle, my colleagues joke that if the election result is not to their liking, they will move to Canada. On election night 2016, “move to Canada” trended on Google, and the Canadian immigration website crashed. This election cycle America is having an existential crisis. What does America stand for? Who is American? What are American values? This time around, my colleagues …
George Floyd’s murder magnified attention to police brutality and inspired collective activism leading to structural reforms and demands for abolition. His death provoked a national reckoning with the racism infecting all major American institutions, including American medicine. Health care providers (HCPs) have since called for diagnosing and treating systemic racism and promoting antiracism in …
The COVID-19 public health emergency has highlighted that government rules and regulations should not hinder providers from delivering high-quality care to patients. The Trump Administration exhibited an understanding of this principle long before the pandemic when it announced the Cut the Red Tape initiative in 2017. With a healthcare system marked by $200 billion in annual administrative costs that contributes to higher costs for patients and …
For many years and in disturbing frequency over the past few years, police brutality has been a big-ticket issue. The excessive use of force has led to innumerable acts of civil rights violation and, most tragically, the disproportionate death and destruction of innocent Black lives. There have been many debates on what to do to change law enforcement culture. But what has been weighing on my mind is …
I have been a doctor for twenty years, but I’m also a patient. We are all patients. This summer, my previously mild heart rhythm problem got a lot worse. By July, I was having frequent episodes of heart rates four times normal, causing me to almost lose consciousness. It was dangerous and scary. I consulted with a highly specialized doctor to fix this for good. He threaded four wires …
A recent edition of Pediatrics has some disturbing research: “Trends in Capability of Hospitals to Provide Definitive Acute Care for Children: 2008 to 2016.” What the paper really does is document what many of us who work in referral hospitals have noted for some time: More and more community hospitals are transferring children who appear in their emergency departments to other, larger facilities instead of admitting them to …
ADVERTISEMENT
Dr. Anthony Fauci, National Institute of Health Director of Allergy and Infectious Disease and White House Coronavirus Task Force member, recently underwent surgery to remove a vocal cord polyp. This is not surprising given that a major risk factor for developing vocal cord polyps is overuse of the voice, something Fauci has likely experienced during the COVID19 pandemic as he has been called upon to speak …
An excerpt from Butchered by “Healthcare”: What to Do About Doctors, Big Pharma, and Corrupt Government Ruining Your Health and Medical Care.
Doctors help patients, and they love us for it. We fix bones, replace joints, cure killer infections, and control diabetes with insulin. We use painless …
President Trump recently signed two executive orders directly related to prescription drug prices in the U.S.
One order would allow the “reimportation” of prescription drugs from Canada. This longstanding idea would allow U.S. pharmacies and drug wholesalers the ability to pay generally much lower prices for their prescription drugs by getting them from Canadian suppliers who benefit from government management of the system. Many consumers have been buying direct from Canadian …
ADVERTISEMENT
After being kept up all night responding to pages, I was still half-asleep walking into Mr. Jenkins’ room for what I thought would be a routine early morning admission for new-onset seizures. From scanning through the electronic medical record, I was not expecting to encounter the unfortunate and complex array of social factors underlying his condition.
Mr. Jenkins was in his late 20s and had three children to take care of. …
When we think about holistic medicine, many assume that it requires human-to-human touch points and, therefore, doesn’t lend itself well to technology and innovations such as artificial intelligence. In fact, holistic medicine and whole-person care advocates often view technology as manufactured or impersonal and therefore dismiss its utility for health care. This is because there is a perception that health care tech values the human experience only for the purpose …
I have noticed several articles describing how antibiotic development has bankrupted some pharmaceutical companies because there isn’t enough potential profit in a ten-day course to treat multi-resistant superbug infections.
Chronic disease treatments, on the other hand, appear to be extremely profitable. A single month’s treatment with the newer diabetes drugs, COPD inhalers, or blood thinners costs over $500, which means well over $50,000 over an effective ten year patent for each …
ADVERTISEMENT
“I often heard as a child that Mexicans were lazy and dirty. As a Mexican-American, I did not wear shorts for years despite the heat because I thought my knees looked dirty. Now I fully embrace my identity. However, as a medical student, I still feel the pressure to disprove these stereotypes.”
– Camila Hurtado
“Growing up in the barrio, my white classmates would tease and bully the brown Latino kids constantly. …
Get free updates delivered free to your inbox.
