Category: Public Health & Policy

These medical students signed up for rural medicine. What happened to them?

The University of Kansas School of Medicine-Salina opened in 2011 — a one-building campus in the heart of wheat country dedicated to producing the rural doctors the country needs. Now, eight years later, the school’s first graduates are settling into t…

3 ways to win back the public’s trust in medicine

The United States is currently facing the largest measles outbreak in three decades, with more than 1,200 cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control. The spread of that disease is a mere symptom of one of the most dangerous pandemics of our time…

The ideal health system lies between the two extremes

Admittedly, my views on funding health care have done a 180 since I left medical school. I grew up and went to university in the United Kingdom, which famously has one of the most heavily centralized socialized systems anywhere in the world. Born out o…

Why hospitals are getting into the housing business

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 …

Why hospitals are getting into the housing business

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 …

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…