“Pathognomonia.” I do not believe this is a real word. That’s OK. I don’t care if it isn’t. I have wanted to write this little blurb several times over a period of a few years. My theme is related to what we physicians regard as pathognomon…
Category: primary care
A physician was barred from attending any future IT meetings
In the mid-1990s, I was working as the medical director for a national computer processing company that had the medical policy and utilization review contract for many Medicaid programs in the United States. Within the first few weeks of being hired, I…
When consumerism and convenience goes wild for no good reason
I have received several phone calls in the last few weeks from young adults requesting information about their last vaccinations. They are traveling to areas of the world that suggest or require certain vaccines and do not remember if they had them or …
3 lessons this physician learned from her patients
I recently completed my internal medicine residency training. Three years, thousands of hours, thousands of patients, thousands of decisions. I certainly learned a lot from the past three years: everything from what “HFrEF” means and how to manage it…
Electronic health records: separating the signal from the noise
5,177. That’s the current number of “cc’ed charts” as of this morning in my electronic health record in-basket. While it might sound like a lot, this is not at all an unusual accumulation, partly due to the fact that I receive a…
The rewards of being a designated airman medical examiner
For the last 25 years, I have had the privilege of being a designated airman medical examiner by the Federal Aviation Administration. To earn that privilege, it required flying to FAA headquarters and taking a one-week training course followed by refre…
We can empower patients by validating their perceptions
I am a mother. A wife. A daughter. A sister. A friend. I am a doctor. I am a runner. Just like everyone, there are many pieces to my core identity. These are the traits that encompass the fixed view I hold of myself. These ring true for me, even when…
Why we need more physician entrepreneurs
Three years ago, I had a massive, life-changing event. It passed with little notice; it was beyond banal and happened while eating sushi with a colleague in a landlocked state. Here I am with a young patient at the direct primary care practice I opened…
A minor obsession with the word, “pipeline”
In family medicine, there’s a minor obsession with the word “pipeline.” The term makes me want to scream. Just think about a pipeline. The “line” part is superfluous. A pipeline is actually just a pipe. Our goal is to stuff prospective mission-driven f…
How doctors can distinguish themselves in a data-driven world
When I was in medical school, I didn’t realize the potential data would have in health care. Back then I learned from 1000+ page hardcover textbooks and handwrote notes in paper medical records. Fast forward twenty years — data and analytics are …
