The Republicans don’t yet have a health care plan less than a year before the 2020 elections. But based upon their 2017 Obamacare repeal and replace efforts, as well as a major document recently issued by the House Republican Study Committee, wha…
Category: KevinMD
Let’s do better for patients with limited English proficiency
I’ve noticed a theme in my clinic since I started practicing medicine: when a patient understands what is being said about their care, treatment, and services, they’re more likely to fulfill critical health care responsibilities. No one sho…
MKSAP: 60-year-old man with exertional chest discomfort
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 60-year-old man is evaluated for a 5-month history of exertional chest discomfort that improves with rest. His symptoms have progressively …
The erroneous belief that the elderly have the healing power of younger individuals
A wise professor of medicine always told me as a young physician, “Eighty-year olds are to be revered and not messed with.” This is especially true for those 90 or older. Here in South Florida, there is always some senior citizen telling us today’s …
Chronic illness? Have faith in medicine.
I am healthy, a mom of two boys, a wife, and an emergency medicine PA for the past 12 years. I don’t just say I’m healthy to say it, but I really am. I’ve never taken medications, until now. It’s New Year’s Eve, and I̵…
A paradoxical fix to physician burnout: more patients, less supervision
Most physicians recall the rigors of their residency training through a mixed lens. In prior generations, a single-duty shift could stretch to 36 or more consecutive hours, but the exhaustion was buoyed by the camaraderie of sleepless on-call nights in…
How special interests won big and consumers lost big
As the year winds down and must-pass year-end spending bills are completed — and with that, any chance of attaching and approving health care legislation — the special interests have won big, and consumers have lost big. Employers, unions, …
Doctors: Always be prepared to suture wounds
Ninety minutes before my Sunday night shift, my two-year-old, Titan, comes screaming up the stairs looking like a scene out of a slasher horror movie. His older sister sheepishly admitted to chasing him into the edge of a door frame. We created an ED b…
The progressive increase in adult obesity is more complicated than we think
All of us are aware of what has been termed our “obesity epidemic.” The current prevalence of obesity among adults in the U.S. is around 40 percent, a dramatic increase over the past 50 years; it was about 15 percent in 1970. Rates are also increasing …
Tales of an emergency physician, recertifying for the third time
Year 2000. I’m sitting in a semi-fancy hotel ballroom near LAX along with several hundred slightly edgy emergency physicians. We’re all awaiting the start of our ABEM written re-certification examination. This was in the old-school days of live exams. …
