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…
Category: Public Health & Policy
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…
How pneumatic tubes symbolizes our health system
About once or twice a day, everyone on our hospital’s computer network gets an emergency message that scrolls across the bottom of our screens, highlighted in the colors of danger and warning. They include things like a notification that a partic…
Let’s end surprise billing without a Trojan Horse
With August recess at a close, Congress has yet to find a solution to end balance (or “surprise”) billing, where patients are charged the remainder of their medical bill for out-of-network (OON) expenses not reimbursed by their health plan….
It’s time for AI-enabled solutions in health care to live up to their buzz
Artificial intelligence is incredibly buzzy in health care right now, and for a good reason. Other industries are already experiencing AI-enabled radical transformations, like real-time fraud monitoring and detection in banking and finance and instanta…
Seniority is the worst metric for health care leadership
Health care delivery in the United States is being led by practitioners who have ascended to leadership roles primarily through years of loyalty to their organizations. But as burnout worsens and affects the youngest clinicians to the detriment of the …
Gender bias in medicine: What can women physicians do to overcome it?
The United States has been a slow brewing cauldron of gender bias for years. With increasing tensions and an unspoken, formidable energy in most workplaces and educational institutions, women have grown restless. The culmination has and is resulting in…
We are healers and advocates. The two roles are inseparable.
In my urban primary care clinic, creativity and advocacy are some of our most basic tools. Recently, one of our residents brought up a homeless patient’s social barriers to colorectal cancer screening: no companion to escort her home from a colonoscopy…
