By HANS DUVEFELT, MD My Name is Doctor Bottleneck Hello, my name is Doctor Bottleneck. My role is the opposite of a company CEO or a small business owner, even though I am clinically responsible fo… | Continue reading
By MEGAN FROST BABB, MD The other day while I walked to work, I deliberately slowed my pace to allow time for my left hand to lightly graze the brick wall I was passing. I watched as my fingers ebb… | Continue reading
By JEFF GOLDSMITH Healthcare payment in the US has evolved in decades-long sweeps over the past fifty years, as both public programs and employers attempted to contain the relentless rise in health… | Continue reading
By HANS DUVEFELT, MD The other day I saw a new patient who used to be on Lamictal, a mood stabilizer. The young man explained that he had gone through a difficult time in his life a few years ago a… | Continue reading
By DANIEL STONE, MD (1) President Trump’s wobbly walk down a ramp at his recent West Point visit along with his awkward two-handed drink from a water glass have stirred recent speculation abo… | Continue reading
By DAVID SHAYWITZ, MD I was recently speaking with a friend of mine, a pulmonologist at a large academic medical center in the Midwest, about his COVID-19 experience. I was especially interested, i… | Continue reading
By NORTIN HADLER, MD We are all reeling from the language of the COVID-19 pandemic: fatality rates, spread, PPE, distancing, pneumonia, anti-viral drugs, ventilators, second wave, vaccines, serolog… | Continue reading
By ANISH KOKA, MD A number of politically tinged narratives have divided physicians during the pandemic. It would be unfortunate if politics obscured the major problem brought into stark relief by … | Continue reading
By DAVID SHAYWITZ, MD As attractive as it is to think that science exists on a distinctive, untarnished, untrammeled plane, this idealization is dangerously misleading. Science is carried out by re… | Continue reading
By MARTIN A. SAMUELS, MD Burnout has become an obsession in the medical profession. I am almost 75 years old and am not feeling any of the symptoms of physician burnout. I do not state … | Continue reading
By ADRIAN GROPPER, MD Until scientists discover a vaccine or treatment for COVID-19, our economy and our privacy will be at the mercy of imperfect technology used to manage the pandemic response. C… | Continue reading
By JEFF GOLDSMITH (6) By the end of April, the scope of COVID-19 damage to the US hospital system is becoming clearer, measured in tens of billions in lost revenues per month. While g… | Continue reading
By JEFF GOLDSMITH Health systems all across the United States are reeling from a once-in-a-working-lifetime crisis brought about by the COVID-19 epidemic. Hospitals, care systems and physicia… | Continue reading
By DAVID SHAYWITZ, MD Technology has been hailed for its ability to connect us; we’ve tended to view this is a positive development, but as rare, high-impact events like the coronavirus epidemic re… | Continue reading
By FRANCINE HARDAWAY I’m writing this for the ER doc who I have a feeling I’m going to be meeting one day soon. I thought I’d introduce myself. I’m the one who is going to be triaged: 78 years old,… | Continue reading
By FRANCINE HARDAWAY I’m writing this for the ER doc who I have a feeling I’m going to be meeting one day soon. I thought I’d introduce myself. I’m the one who is going to be triaged: 78 years old,… | Continue reading
By ANISH KOKA, MD (5) As the globe faces a novel, highly transmissible, lethal virus, I am most struck by a medicine cabinet that is embarrassingly empty for doctors in this battle. This mean… | Continue reading
By JEFF GOLDSMITH After a decade dominated by ObamaCare- its enactment in 2010, the fraught implementation, its near repeal in 2017, and the welter of inconclusive experiments with Medicare payment… | Continue reading
By RICHARD GUNDERMAN, MD The news was bad. Mimi, a woman in her early 80s, had been undergoing treatment for lymphoma. Her husband was being treated for bladder cancer. Recently, she developed ches… | Continue reading
By GEORGE DAWSON, MD Steve Jobs: “Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and… | Continue reading
By GEORGE DAWSON, MD I read a paper recently (1) on psychiatric bed policy with a focus on OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) nations. The OECD has extensive data co… | Continue reading
By NIRAN AL AGBA, MD Gun violence has become a public health epidemic. Despite countless deaths in mass shootings over the last 2 decades, the Dickey Amendment—a provision inserted into the 1… | Continue reading
By JUAN CABALLERO An optimistic introduction to what could come after the VC funded cycle of disruptions and consolidations. Various new kinds of software, we are endlessly being told, are the Next… | Continue reading
BY ANISH KOKA, MD (6) Because I’m that guy, I took a poll at the recent family barbecue. “Heart disease—who has it worse? Men or women?” I asked. The answers came quickly. My mother-in-law and sist… | Continue reading
By KIP SULLIVAN, JD Three weeks ago I posted a comment here about a decision by the Minnesota Supreme Court in the case of Warren v. Dinter. In that case, the court held, by a 5-2 margin, tha… | Continue reading
by JEFF GOLDSMITH My career as a “futurist” began in 1986, in response to a request from the Editor of the late Hospitals magazine to write an essay on the US Health System in 2036. You can f… | Continue reading
DAVID INTROCASO Three weeks ago the 9th US Circuit Court heard oral arguments in the Juliana v. the US case filed in 2015 by 21 children who petitioned the court to require the federal government t… | Continue reading
By KIP SULLIVAN (18) On April 17, the Minnesota Supreme Court published an opinion holding that doctors who deny services to patients may be sued even if they did not have a doctor-patient relation… | Continue reading
By SUSANNAH FOX (17) There has been a steady drip-drip-drip of articles documenting how health apps are sharing data with third parties: Data sharing practices of medicines related apps and the mob… | Continue reading
By KIP SULLIVAN (14) Two bills that are called “Medicare for all” bills by their supporters have just been introduced in Congress. On February 27, Representative Pramila Jayapal introduced the Medi… | Continue reading
By NIRAN AL-AGBA, MD It’s no secret that in today’s health care market, insurance companies are calling the shots. As a pediatrician in private practice for almost two decades, I’ve seen insurance … | Continue reading