At our yearly Christmas medical staff dinner this last year, our chief of staff asked all the doctors present who had been working at our hospital for five or more years to stand up. Quite a few of us rose. He then asked those who had been there 10 years or more to remain standing. After half of us sat down, he upped the ante to 15 years, then to …
We are born into corridors,
measured, labeled,
painted neutral,
walls rising before we learn how wide
our thoughts can stretch.
Lines are drawn early:
This is far enough,
this is acceptable,
this is where you stop.
We are told our ideas must sit quietly,
folded into boxes like unused maps,
that imagination is dangerous if it wanders,
that questions should behave
and answers should already be known.
Life, they say, is safest when it stays
inside the margins.
But something restless stirs
beneath the rules.
A pulse.
A whisper …
The necessity of getting lost to find yourself
More than a month after HSA-eligible direct primary care became available, independent practices remain unprepared for the operational complexity employer contracts require. The DPC community celebrated regulatory victory. Private equity prepared infrastructure.
That preparation became visible throughout 2025. Frontier Direct Care announced a $20 million Series B to expand its employer-sponsored DPC platform. Marathon Health, formed from the 2024 Everside merger, operates …
Employer-sponsored DPC: Why private equity is winning the infrastructure race
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Internal medicine physician Shirisha Kamidi discusses her article “Small habits, big impact on health.” Shirisha explains why prevention is often more powerful than treatment when addressing conditions like diabetes and hypertension. She …
Simple choices prevent chronic disease [PODCAST]
Shortly after Halloween, I hid my daughter’s candy haul.
Not because candy is evil nor because I’m trying to ban sugar from our house. But because I kept finding candy wrappers in random trash cans, and I realized that having a giant bag of candy sitting out was just too tempting for my family.
We have a similar rule with ice cream. We don’t buy it at the grocery store. If we …
Physician weight loss strategy: Why willpower isn’t enough in 2026
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Certified coach and medical educator Kathleen Muldoon discusses her article “AI moderation of online health communities.” Kathleen shares the harrowing personal story of having her social media account disabled when an algorithm …
AI censorship threatens the lifeline of caregiver support [PODCAST]
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Primary care physician Jerina Gani discusses their article “The hidden rewards of a primary care career.” Jerina challenges the common narrative that general practice is merely a stepping stone filled with paperwork …
Primary care offers unexpected financial and emotional wealth [PODCAST]
Medicine prides itself on early diagnosis and decisive treatment. We are trained to recognize patterns, apply categories, and follow pathways designed to reduce uncertainty. This approach saves lives. But there is a quiet point at which it can also cause harm.
That moment occurs when diagnosis becomes closure.
I recently spoke with a young woman in her 20s with endometriosis. She had done everything medicine asked of her: sought care, underwent surgery, …
When diagnosis becomes closure: the harm of stopping too soon
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Physical therapists Ziya Altug and Shirish Sachdeva discuss their article “Why your clinic waiting room may affect patient outcomes.” Ziya and Shirish explore how the ambiance of a medical office significantly impacts …
Smart design choices improve patient care outcomes [PODCAST]
Let’s talk about physician wellness.
Not the version that looks good in press releases or PowerPoint slides. I am talking about the lived, messy, heart-and-body version of wellness, the one that actually matters.
Because somewhere between the lavender oil diffusers and the “wellness committees,” the real meaning of physician well-being got lost. It has become a buzzword, something hospitals display proudly on banners and conference agendas, as if saying the word “wellness” …
Physician wellness is not yoga: Why resilience training fails
Picture a “No Entry” sign or a speed limit. A simple red circle needs no translation for a driver in Tokyo, Tehran, or Toronto. That’s more than just convenience; it’s a global safety net.
But in health care, where a misunderstanding can be deadly, our communication hasn’t kept up. We still rely overwhelmingly on words, pages of dense text handed to patients who are stressed, exhausted, older, or struggling with a …
Visual language in health care: Why words aren’t enough
The years pass without ceremony.
They do not always announce themselves.
Sometimes they slip by like quiet weather,
like afternoons we cannot later recall
except by the way the light
once rested against a wall.
Time moves like autumn wind,
unannounced,
persistent,
tender in its own indifferent way.
A milkweed stands in a field,
having grown tall without noticing
the exact moment it became mature.
Its green has deepened,
its stem stiffened with understanding.
Now the wind arrives,
and the pods open
not in grief,
but in readiness.
Each …
The milkweed and the wind: a poem on aging as renewal
In recent years, medicine has become more open about burnout, workforce shortages, and the challenges facing women in health care leadership. We write about mentorship programs, leadership pipelines, and the need to bring more women into ownership and executive roles. We celebrate women who build clinics, lead departments, and create space for others to rise.
What we talk about far less is what happens when women actually meet each other in …
Women in health care leadership: Navigating competition and mentorship
I have the great honor and privilege of coaching medical students throughout their training. In the past week, several students have shared experiences that have stayed with me: On clinical rotations, some shared stories of being referred to only as “student one” or “student two,” their humanity quietly erased. Others described managing food and housing insecurity while carrying the financial burden of medical education. Still others, particularly students with darker …
Moral courage in medical training: the power of the powerless
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Physician, former health care executive, certified coach, speaker, and organizational consultant Laura Suttin discusses her article “Why the 4 a.m. wake-up call isn’t for everyone.” Laura shares her personal struggle with the …
Waking up at 4 a.m. is not required for success [PODCAST]
I used to think medicine would change me by adding things. Knowledge. Confidence. Authority. Certainty. I assumed growth would look like accumulation, more skills, more answers, more control. What actually happened was the opposite. Medicine changed me by subtraction.
When I started writing as a medical student, everything felt sharp and exposed. The hospital was loud, inefficient, and often cruel in ways no one named out loud. I wrote about scut …
Medicine changed me by subtraction: a physician’s evolution
Elevance Health recently reported that it expects to lose more than 180,000 fully insured group plan enrollees in 2026, with its CFO describing the strategy as “prioritizing disciplined pricing and margin integrity over volume.” UnitedHealth has made similar statements. Both are effectively walking away from the fully insured employer market, where administrative complexity no longer justifies the economics.
At the same time, private equity is pouring capital into …
Why private equity is betting on employer DPC over retail
Dr. Andrea Love wrote about the lack of basic scientific knowledge among the public, noting that only about 28 percent of people possess it. She highlighted the consequences of this, emphasizing how it can negatively affect people’s decisions and lives.
Many of the articles I have written have dealt with scientific knowledge in one form or another. My comments on the FDA and drug approvals, Alzheimer’s and cancer screening blood tests, …
Scientific literacy in nutrition: How to read food labels
In 1983, The Outsiders featured Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and, augmented by Francis Ford Coppola’s cinematic genius, it planted a seed, one I was unaware of at the time.
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can …
For the past few weeks, I’ve been rotating through pediatrics. In the emergency room, I met a little boy I’ll call Ian.
Ian was wary of everyone who came close to him, especially anyone holding a stethoscope or thermometer. Sometimes all it took was the way you raised your hand, or a glance toward his neck, for him to retreat behind invisible walls. He was only about a year and a …
Pediatric care barriers in West Africa: a clinician’s perspective
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