One patient at Denver Health, the city’s largest safety-net hospital, occupied a bed for more than four years — a hospital record of 1,558 days. Another admitted for a hard-to-treat bacterial infection needed eight weeks of at-home IV antibiotics, but …
Category: Public Health & Policy
It’s time for women in medicine to get their moonshot
This year, the world reflected on the 50th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 mission to the moon. The achievement was extraordinary for many reasons, not the least of which was the sheer tenacity and imagination required for thousands of scientists…
If you build a budget, hospitals will adapt
U.S. health care spending is maddeningly high. As in fifty percent higher than what other wealthy countries spend, with no evidence we’re getting any bang for all those additional health care bucks. In 2014, the state of Maryland took direct aim at thi…
Medical schools need to produce more clinician-activists to help drive social change
For hundreds of years, health care providers have been on the front lines of social change. Think Margaret Sanger, a nurse who championed women’s rights and started the organization that later became Planned Parenthood, or Max Recamier, one of the phys…
Medical schools need to produce more clinician-activists to help drive social change
For hundreds of years, health care providers have been on the front lines of social change. Think Margaret Sanger, a nurse who championed women’s rights and started the organization that later became Planned Parenthood, or Max Recamier, one of the phys…
Don’t underestimate the appeal of a Trump “health plan”
As the Democratic candidates for president continue to beat up each other on how best to achieve universal coverage (Medicare for all, a public option, closing the ACA’s coverage gaps), health care journalists keep wondering when President Trump will r…
It’s time for presidential candidates to debate the safety of pharmaceutical products
I watched all three presidential debates this summer with health care being a time-consuming topic for all. Universal health care and Medicare for all, with or without an option for private insurance, were debated and discussed at length. At the same t…
Black market pharmaceuticals target immigrants
The bootleg medications were smuggled across the border and sold to mostly Latino immigrants in public spaces throughout Los Angeles — at swap meets, parks, beauty salons and makeshift stands outside mom-and-pop grocery stores. The drugs were cheap, an…
In medicine, find the beauty in what is common
“The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely.” – Osler, “Aequanimitas” Recently, my family and I were leaving a restaurant, and in so doing, we crossed a large parking lot filled with a seemingly en…
Your bone fracture, my cash flow: the consequences of private equity in health care
A recent article in Modern Healthcare describes how private equity firms are starting to snatch up specialist physician groups that promise rich revenues, such as orthopedists, dermatologists, and ophthalmologists. Naturally, this is about adding value…
