Trust is vital to the provision of quality health care. Quality outcomes have shown a correlation with exceptional health care experiences, with patients associating higher trust in health care professionals with “more beneficial health behavior,…
Category: Public Health & Policy
The long walk home to a better health care system
Like him or not, Bruce Springsteen’s albums have served as the soundtrack to our lives, writing songs that are a reflection of ourselves, challenging our assumptions, and helping us make sense of our messy, chaotic lives. People from all walks of…
How to fix our broken health care system from the inside [PODCAST]
Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes! We sit down with Paula Muto, a vascular surgeon, who discusses the challenges she’s faced in a health care system on the brink of collapse. From hospital closures dr…
A physician’s perspective on the crisis in Massachusetts health care
I am a surgeon from a family of surgeons, all based in Massachusetts. Throughout my career, I have faced many challenges, both in and outside of the operating room. Like most doctors, I am saddened by the current collapse of our system in general and m…
Voting from the hospital: How emergency ballots give patients a voice
Voting is one of the most fundamental rights in our democracy, and yet it can be incredibly challenging. Getting to your polling station, waiting in line, remembering to request your absentee ballot, checking your voter registration status—it is not a …
Voting from the hospital: How emergency ballots give patients a voice
Voting is one of the most fundamental rights in our democracy, and yet it can be incredibly challenging. Getting to your polling station, waiting in line, remembering to request your absentee ballot, checking your voter registration status—it is not a …
Why climate change threatens our children’s future: hurricanes, floods, and a call to act
As Valencia, Spain, reels from devastating flash floods and the U.S. Southeast recovers from hurricanes Helene and Milton, I, like many other parents, look at my own kids with increasing concern about the ailing world they will inherit. If a climate ha…
The hidden $935 billion problem in U.S. health care no one is talking about—and how to solve it
“Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly.” – Thomas Edison The escalating challenge of waste in U.S. medicine The U.S. health care system…
Health care reform requires better access and quality: dialysis as an example
Having spent two years in Oxford as a Marshall Scholar in the mid-1970s, I came back to medical school believing in a national health service—i.e., Medicare for all. But I learned firsthand that a monopoly can provide access without ensuring quality. W…
Voting as a physician: How my parents’ story inspired me to advocate
My parents, both physicians, embody the American story. After completing medical school in Iran, they were recruited to the U.S. in 1968 to fill the gap left by doctors sent to Vietnam. Building a life from the ground up, they became pillars of their p…
