Category: primary care

Will robots replace doctors?

Among the many recurring topics, this year has been the impact of machine learning in our lives, especially the implications for our future work life. Prophecies range from ubiquitous utopian machine servants to a dystopian ravaging, hollowing out the …

A physician who is afraid of shots

This is not a story about anti-vaxxers. This is a story about primary care. Running a smaller practice, as I do, has inherent rewards and challenges. There is literature on both sides of the Atlantic that patients prefer small practices. Lately, consol…

The stories of rural physicians

This article is sponsored by Careers by KevinMD.com. When George W. “Billy” Campbell, MD, walks down the street, he never knows who — or what — he’s going to encounter. Anything can happen when you’re the doctor at Foothills Fam…

The spirit of Santa Claus in medicine

For longer than anyone could remember, he was the rural community’s pharmacist. A skilled compounder of prescriptions and conversant in chocolates, greeting card, and how to prevent a trip to the doctor’s office by using an over-the-counter…

Join telemedicine’s transformation of the health care delivery model

I came across Dr. Kevin Tolliver’s post, “Beware the Limits of Telemedicine,” and found it to gloss over the benefits of telemedicine and the opportunities that increasing telemedicine uptake can afford to the patient and provider. With thi…

How can we reduce the no-show rate in primary care?

At a quality and patient safety meeting recently, one of the departments was presenting their annual report on all they have done, reviewing progress that has been made around several quality and patient safety initiatives. One of their project centere…

The many benefits of strengthening the primary care workforce

The United States spends more on health care per capita than any other country in the world — yet health outcomes continue to fall short. In order to close the spending gap with other countries, United States health care policy must focus on reducing c…

What administrators don’t understand about urgent care centers

Several years ago, a group of us concerned about health care costs and outcomes met with some local HR benefit managers. One was the head HR person of a city. In part of the conversation, she raved about a local chain of urgent care centers. She loved …

Doctors overcorrect too often

Back when cholesterol target numbers ruled unopposed (before 2013), we all checked fasting lipids every three months. Before 2012, we also checked liver function quarterly in hapless riders on the cholesterol pill merry-go-round. That year the FDA anno…

3 things physicians can learn from politicians

Shock. Horror. Did you just read the title correctly, or are you seeing things? Well, after you recover from the shock of reading a line you probably never thought you could possibly see in writing — let me tell you this: Physicians and politicia…