Author's posts
New doctors are prioritizing the wrong things
Every year, there’s this rite of passage, the passing of the baton, as our graduating senior residents move on to fellowships, or into spots as hospitalists, or to practice jobs here in New York City or other cities, and a fresh new group of newl…
Stop nickel and diming doctors
So, who doesn’t want a better health care system? We are barraged with stories in the medical literature and in the public press about the terrible state of our health care system, what poor outcomes we have, the inefficiencies in care, complaint…
How to prevent patients from falling through the cracks
Falling through the cracks, when it comes to health care, is a bad thing, but the way things are going, it’s getting harder and harder to avoid. Providers in every setting are bombarded on all sides with data, results, messages, and things crying…
Physicians are overwhelmed by alarms and alerts
Yesterday, I got just about the strangest version of “MD aware” I have ever had. We all know what this is, the person who is relaying some critical clinical information (positive blood cultures, Mr. Smith in Room 402 is having chest pain, e…
In the age of EHRs, why are we still asking patients to fill out paper forms?
From the sublime to the ridiculous. That’s sort of how my day went yesterday. It started out with an early morning meeting with a colleague who has been implementing a telehealth program at one of our institution’s practices, learning about…
Medicine is the last bastion of faxes and printers
Yesterday, I went into an exam room to print out some orders for a patient who needed to get his labs done at an outside facility. Due to his insurance, he cannot get his labs drawn in our office during a scheduled appointment, but must do it at one of…
What health care can learn from a robotic delivery service
Several weeks ago, as I was walking through the halls of our hospital, out from an intersecting hallway drove a robotic delivery cart. Unmanned and adorned with sensors so it could tell where it was in the world, it motored along on its way, heading so…
All doctors sign forms they haven’t read. Is there a better way?
Recently, I was called to task — and probably rightly so — for signing something I know I didn’t read. This was several months ago, when one of my partners was out on family medical leave, and we divided up all of the coverage of her …
When gender identity confuses the electronic health record
One little thing. Somehow, with the changeover to the latest release of our electronic medical record, something happened to some of the demographic information on our patients. Suddenly, an enormous number of patients were now labeled as choosing not …
How did we let insurance companies get so intimately involved with patient care?
Who works for who? How did we allow ourselves to let a system get built up around us that makes it so hard for us to take care of our patients? Our job is to advocate for our patients, to help guide them towards their best health, to help them understa…
