Author's posts
The whole person care model is seeing its day in the sun
This article is sponsored by NextGen Healthcare and the #NextGenMind campaign, empowering you to improve your overall health by seeking guidance and mental health support when you or a loved one needs it. So much emphasis has been placed in recent year…
The future of general internal medicine is bright
A 2020 President’s Message by Dr. Douglas DeLong struck a reassuring, optimistic note regarding the future of general internal medicine, a primary care specialty that has struggled in the last decade with decreasing numbers of residents choosing to joi…
Men’s mental health: We treat just the tip of the iceberg
June is Men’s Health Month, and this year, as we emerge from the COVID-19 epidemic, more than ever, there is a compelling need to focus on male patients’ overall health, emphasizing their mental health as a key to their wellbeing. Mental health is a si…
How do patients really feel about virtual care and electronic patient engagement?
Recently, a Harris Poll conducted an online among 2,055 adults ages 18+. The survey was conducted within the United States between March 25 to 29, 2021. The survey focused on individuals who had interacted with the health care system in the last year….
Avoiding the pitfalls of integrating primary care into community-based mental health centers
Providing primary care to patients with mental illness is a challenging task that requires highly skilled and experienced practitioners comfortable with the full array of biopsychosocial problems with which these patients present. For example, understa…
A perspective on herd immunity for COVID-19
On February 18, Dr. Marty Makary published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal which struck an unusually optimistic note as to the stage of the American COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Makary predicts that based on the current trajectory, COVID-19 will…
The promise and challenge of integrating primary care into community-based mental health centers
There is ample evidence that patients with severe mental illness are at high risk for significant medical comorbidities. A complex combination of factors contributes to this excess risk and consequential poor outcomes. Socioeconomic factors, side effec…
A national patient identifier would make vaccinating the entire U.S. population easier
Developing the COVID-19 vaccine was the first monumental milestone on a long and arduous journey to achieving the entire U.S. population’s vaccination. One of the barriers to achieving this task is the absence of a reliable, scalable way to uniqu…
Health care is making progress on the “social” in the biopsychosocial model
In his seminal 1977 Science magazine article, “The Need for a New Medical Model: A Challenge for Biomedicine,” Dr. George Engel outlined the biomedical model’s limitations and proposed a new model, which he termed the biopsychosocial …
Vaccinating the entire U.S population: Health information technologies are positioned to help
The mammoth task of vaccinating most of the world’s human population against COVID-19 is before us. Several viable, highly effective vaccines have been developed at record speed. The pharmaceutical industry will now be called upon to meet the nex…
