Have you ever been to a doctor’s office and felt that your evaluation was rushed? Have you been seen in the emergency room and felt that you were just a number in a long series of patients? Have you ever seen the same doctor for years and felt like the…
For several years now, I’ve been the social media curmudgeon in medicine. In a 2011 New York Times op-ed titled “Don’t Quit This Day Job”, I argued that working part-time or leaving medicine goes against our obligation to patients and to the American t…
Health care is on a different trajectory from most other businesses today. It’s a little hard to understand why. In business, mass market products and services have always competed on price or perceived quality. Think Walmart or Mercedes-Benz, even the…
Moving to the Bay Area from the Midwest was a culture shock in many ways. I was amazed by the diversity, the food, the openness of opinions. And I was struck by the traffic, the stark differences driving from one community to another and the homelessne…
In a previous post on LGBTQ care, Dr. Carlene MacMillan called attention to the importance of respecting patients’ pronouns. As she points out, discrepancies between patients’ chosen names/pronouns and gender markers on official documents can pose real…
This seems to be the big take-home message from voters the mid-term elections, which bodes well for preserving gains from the Affordable Care Act and expanding coverage. Health care was the number 1 issue for voters according to several exit polls, b…
“Active Shooter in Squirrel Hill.” This was the subject line of an email I received on the morning of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting. It was from my children’s school, which is located less than a mile from the scene of the shooting. “I am working…
In 1976 I graduated from medical school and proudly joined the medical profession. Thirty-seven years later, I retired as an employee of the biggest business in the country. In 2016 the medical industry was responsible for 3.3 trillion dollars of expen…
Anyone following the debate around gun regulation knows it is a hotly charged issue. On November 7th, doctors got dragged front and center after the NRA issued the statement: “Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. H…
We’re very fortunate in anesthesiology. We’re seldom the physicians who have to face families with the terrible news that a patient has died from a gunshot wound. But all too often we’re right there in the operating room for the frantic attempts to rep…
