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…
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…
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…
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 …
Not including residency, I have been caring for patients for five years. But was I really caring about them? We all took the oath to do no harm. We all began our journey into medicine with intentions to make a difference in patient’s lives. But sometim…
What I’m about to tell you is based on good insider information. But I also disclose that this is an amalgamation of a few reports of teledoc companies to me and their crony insurance companies, not a thorough analysis of the entire industry. I just as…
I guess I should take it as a compliment when patients come to see me after visiting a specialist and ask me a bunch of difficult specialty-related questions. “Did you ask the specialist that?” I typically ask, and the answer will be a plain “no.” I’ve…
In 2006 Dr. Tom Bodenheimer wrote an article that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine entitled, “Primary Care – Will It Survive?” Dr. Bodenheimer spoke with great concern about patients’ growing unhappiness with their primary care phys…
For many of us, “the most wonderful time of the year” is anything but. If we let the holiday season get the better of us, we can find ourselves overeating, overspending, and over-extending from now through New Year’s Eve. Holiday stress has real health…
Prevailing wisdom states that more is better — and it is no different when it comes to our expectation of medical treatments. With the help of the internet, patients and their families have come to expect intensive tests, treatments and therapies at ev…
