Rudolf Virchow, a pioneering physician of the 1800s, once wrote that “politics is nothing but medicine on a large scale”. Over a century later, this nexus is as apparent as ever, and many doctors engage as practitioners of both. Twitter erupted this pa…
The evolving politics of single-payer health care conflate the concepts of universal coverage, health care on demand and free health care. To the indiscriminate progressive mind, all three are part of the holy grail. The fly in the ointment is that hig…
Pay for performance (P4P) is all the rage in health care. Big Pharma led the way, and the popular press would have you believe that one can “incentivize” physicians and their clinical colleagues with as little as a sandwich and a bag of chips. Corporat…
Medicare for all is one of the leading campaign issues among the Democratic presidential candidates. Michigan Rep. John Conyers first introduced the idea in Congress in 2003. It went nowhere, but as the one-time party of JFK morphed into something much…
There has been a disturbing shift in how medical professionals feel about their career. I almost cringe every time I’m at a party or social gathering now and tell people I retired early from my medical practice. I try not to bring it up. I don’t cringe…
Let’s talk about that infamous transition to third year. This is a precarious time in your medical school career when your resolve faces its greatest challenge yet. After weeks of self-imposed exile to prepare for Step 1, you finally take that dreaded …
At some point in my career, I had the crazy idea that if I could scale the patient-centric work I was doing in my community at a small rural hospital — then I could make more of an impact. This is why, when a technology company came calling, dangling a…
Since the passing of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act in 2009, it has been said that health tech would dramatically revolutionize health care and the patient experience. Advocates have claimed time and tim…
Since the passing of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act in 2009, it has been said that health tech would dramatically revolutionize health care and the patient experience. Advocates have claimed time and tim…
When I was a third-year medical student in 2006, I was assigned to spend the day at a well-known women’s health clinic in Toronto. I walked into the procedure room and introduced myself to the attending. His first words to me were: “Are you married?” I…
