A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.com.
Because I work for a medical specialty society, I’m frequently asked by non-members why I believe they should belong to a medical professional society. This is a particularly relevant question these days given the rapidly changing landscape of medicine and with physicians becoming …
Why should you belong to a medical professional society?
It has been a savage few months for reproductive rights, with 12 states passing 26 bills to ban abortion, including measures that ban abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy, as well as attempting to outlaw safe methods of abortion. In the face of this extreme, unprecedented wave of attacks, several states pursued an alternative route, passing laws that expand the scope of abortion providers …
How nurse practitioners can expand abortion access
The money was so good in the beginning, and it seemed it might gush forever, right through tiny country hospitals in Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and into the coffers of companies controlled by Jorge A. Perez, his family, and business partners.
It was his “secret sauce,” the rotund Miami entrepreneur would smilingly tell people in their no-stoplight towns. The money-making ventures he proposed sounded complicated, sure, but he said they would bring …
The story of a hospital collapse and how small towns were devastated
On March 11th and 12th, representatives from the NBME, AMA, AAMC, Federation of State Medical Boards and the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates gathered in Philadelphia for InCUS — the Invitational Conference on USMLE Scoring — to discuss potential changes regarding how Step 1 is scored. InCUS came about as a result of a wave of student frustrations over the pressure from the increasing importance of this exam in …
Should USMLE Step 1 be pass-fail?
On July 8, 2019, the American Academy of Emergency Medicine wrote a letter to the American Medical Association, asking the organization to create a public campaign to support physician-led care.
Noting concerns over the recent media crusade to promote nurse practitioner care to patients, including the American Association of Nurse Practitioners “We Choose NPs” campaign, the letter asks the American Medical Association to combat the …
Although pediatric (children’s) hospitals are not yet mandated (as are their general population counterparts) to participate in value-based contracts (VBCs), as competitive medical institutions they are very cognizant of the market changes toward value-based payment models while tirelessly seeking to increase value in pediatric health care delivery.
The push towards better alignment of payers and hospital systems continues to change the landscape of competitive health care. Children’s hospitals “are the backbone …
Are pediatric hospitals ready to embrace value-based payment models?
Following on the heels of The Creative Destruction of Medicine and The Patient Will See You Now, Dr. Eric Topol has published his newest book, Deep Medicine, earlier this year. While the first two books highlight how technological disruption will first digitize and then democratize medicine, his newest is about deep learning, and how artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to ultimately deepen the patient-physician bond. It …
A medical student reviews Eric Topol’s Deep Medicine
Though the news at first stayed local in Philadelphia and the northeast, it’s gaining traction nationwide. ZDoggMD is on it. Bernie Sanders held a rally.
What happened? The venerable Hahnemann University Hospital, the main teaching hospital for Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, is bankrupt and will soon close its doors after more than 170 years as a safety-net hospital serving inner-city patients.
Why should we care? After all, there …
The disaster at Hahnemann University Hospital
I had the distinct pleasure working with family physician colleagues in Sweden recently. It was a similar experience to a trip I made to Britain about five years ago that I also wrote about. I got to spend some time watching one of my colleagues care for her patients in her surgery (they use the same description of a clinic as the British).
I got to spend some time watching …
An American physician in Sweden. Here’s what he thought about its health care.
Health care is a tough job to work in — whether you are a doctor, nurse or any other professional. We are dealing with matters of life and death, our patients expect (and deserve) the best from us, and we always have a hundred-and-one things to do at the frontlines of medicine. I remember reading somewhere when I was a teenager that a career in medicine would be a “mentally, …
Why you’re an unhappy physician
The World Health Organization describes universal health coverage — a system coupling health care access with financial protection for all residents — as the “single most powerful concept that public health has to offer.” The goal of universal care is to give all people the equal opportunity to enjoy the best health possible.
I wholeheartedly endorse universal health care, though not a single-payer system like “Medicare for all” because there is …
Understanding the distinction between universal health care and a single-payer system is critical
A piece of advice I would give to any younger physician, especially one who is just graduating residency, would be to expect a whirlwind ride into the realities of frontline medical practice. It’s something that you are totally not prepared for in the controlled environment of education and residency training. A steep learning curve awaits you once you start practicing medicine. And one of the biggest things you will have …
Physicians: Do not be intimidated by administrators
Global climate change is reaching a critical mass.
Since the advent of the industrial revolution, we have seen the global mean temperatures increase by 1°C (1.8°F), and significant steps must be taken by 2030 to mitigate an even larger global temperature increase of 1.5 to 3C as predicted by 2030. In other words, we are in dire need of change.
This change is not only reliant on governmental policy change but is …
How climate change affects your skin
“At least seven children are known to have died in immigration custody since last year,” according to a NBC News report last month.
I recently spent a Saturday working with amnesty-seekers that had been detained at California detention centers in the desert. They were dropped off at bus and train stations in the desert in Southern California, most with no money and no ability to …
A physician volunteers with migrants. Here’s what she saw.
An excerpt from Recapturing Joy in Medicine,
During my year as chief resident, I was also president of the Florida Association of Family Medicine Residents. The faculty at my residency program inspired me by their excellence as clinicians and teachers. I trusted their judgment and insight, so when they encouraged …
The power of advocacy: How doctors can be empowered physicians
A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.com.
When talking with patients – particularly those with multiple, complicated medical issues – it often doesn’t take very long to hear about their increasingly suboptimal and sometimes harrowing interactions with our health care system.
Examples include inpatient experiences in which care is provided by …
In our health system, who “owns” patients?
For a hospital that had once labored to break even, Wheeling Hospital displayed abnormally deep pockets when recruiting doctors.
To lure Dr. Adam Tune, an anesthesiologist from nearby Pittsburgh who specialized in pain management, the Catholic hospital built a clinic for him to run on its campus in Wheeling, W.Va. It paid Tune as much as $1.2 million a year — well above the salaries of 90% of pain management physicians …
When physician pay packages become hospital kickbacks
Let’s burn health insurance down. Greedy corporate bastards should burn. Big Pharma and big hospitals should probably burn too. You know who else is really, really, bad? Wall Street. Let’s burn the banks. And let’s burn Big Tech and the entire Silicon Valley cartel. Let’s also burn Big Agribusiness that’s making us fat and sick. And let’s burn the Oil companies that are destroying the planet, and let’s burn the …
The problem with burning health insurance down
The U.S. health care “system” is completely and utterly broken. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.S. system ranks 37th in the world, all while spending dramatically more on health care than other wealthy countries. Tens of millions remain without any health insurance coverage. For many, medical bills can mean economic ruin — some surveys show that up to Read more…
Nurses are striking. Where are the physicians?
“I have the CPAP machine. I’ve had it for a year, but I don’t have electricity in my house. I stayed with my aunt who has electricity but things didn’t work out,” said the young Navajo man, his massive belly protruding out from underneath the tray table.
The old Navajo man with Parkinson’s disease, unable to walk fast enough to make it to the outhouse in time, had started taking anti-diarrheal …
The systemic poverty in Navajo Nation is a national travesty
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