KevinMD.com

October 8, 2026Oct 8, 2026

We know when a patient's laboratory values have improved. We know when the infection has cleared, the fracture has been repaired, or the heart failure has stabilized. But before declaring treatment successful, we should ask a more ordinary and often…

We know when a patient’s laboratory values have improved. We know when the infection has cleared, the fracture has been repaired, or the heart failure has stabilized. But before declaring treatment successful, we should ask a more ordinary and often more consequential question:

Can this person safely get out of bed?

Too often, health care discovers the answer only when discharge is approaching. Rehabilitation is then asked to solve, in a matter …

Tech

Can independent medical judgment survive AI in medicine?

Sean C. Domnick, JD

October 8, 2026Oct 8, 2026

Every few weeks, another headline asks whether artificial intelligence is about to replace physicians. I doubt it. Patients don't want to hand the most important conversations of their lives to a computer. Doctors didn't spend years training to become little…

Every few weeks, another headline asks whether artificial intelligence is about to replace physicians. I doubt it. Patients don’t want to hand the most important conversations of their lives to a computer. Doctors didn’t spend years training to become little more than supervisors of software. Medicine has always been, and should remain, a profoundly human profession.

But I do think we’re asking the wrong question. The real question isn’t whether AI …

Physicians

Good trouble: lessons from a physician whistleblower

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

October 8, 2026Oct 8, 2026

Rep. John Lewis nearly lost his life on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, marching for rights that should never have required a march. His courage redefined the moral calculus of resistance, what he called "good trouble, necessary trouble." I've…

I’ve created trouble too. Not on bridges, but in boardrooms. Not with batons overhead, but with data, dissent, and quiet refusal. I’ve challenged supervisors, disrupted systems, and questioned protocols that harmed more …

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Tech

AI deskilling in medicine: lessons from Air France 447

Colin G. Knight, MD

October 8, 2026Oct 8, 2026

In 2021, at four endoscopy centers in Poland, endoscopists got a new tool to aid in colonoscopies. A computer equipped with an artificial intelligence watched the video alongside them and highlighted anything that looked like a polyp. The centers were part of a trial, so, as part of the study, the doctors had access to the tool on some days and not on others. This variability allowed researchers a chance …

Policy

Workplace violence in health care needs a national standard

Isabella Hower, MOT

October 8, 2026Oct 8, 2026

My foot slid on something wet as I entered the medical/surgical unit. Glancing down, I wondered vaguely who had spilled cranberry juice before registering the red droplets for what they were: blood. I looked over my shoulder and froze. A…

My foot slid on something wet as I entered the medical/surgical unit. Glancing down, I wondered vaguely who had spilled cranberry juice before registering the red droplets for what they were: blood.

I looked over my shoulder and froze. A patient stood in the deserted hallway, blood streaking his arm from where he appeared to have ripped out an IV. A pair of bandage scissors hung loosely in his hand.

I ran …

Conditions

Should good faith immunity cover trained clinicians?

Erin Daugherty, RN

October 8, 2026Oct 8, 2026

The high-profile Take Care of Maya case, chronicled in the Netflix documentary, placed the complex legal doctrines of qualified immunity and good faith immunity directly into the public spotlight. While a jury initially awarded the Kowalski family $261 million in damages (later reduced to $213.5 million) against Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital for claims including false imprisonment, medical negligence, and wrongful death, a Florida appellate court overturned the verdict. The …

Physicians

Physician leaders at the bedside see what dashboards miss

Manoj Sreedharan, MD

October 8, 2026Oct 8, 2026

Some of the most useful information I get as a medical director does not come from a dashboard or a meeting. It comes from working a clinical shift. When you are seeing patients alongside the people affected by the processes…

Some of the most useful information I get as a medical director does not come from a dashboard or a meeting. It comes from working a clinical shift.

When you are seeing patients alongside the people affected by the processes you help oversee, problems become difficult to ignore. You see where the workflow slows down, where responsibilities are unclear, and where a seemingly simple administrative change creates extra work. That is …

Conditions

Biomarker testing can find the mutation driving your cancer

Gene Uzawa Dorio, MD

October 8, 2026Oct 8, 2026

"What was cancer, Grandpa?" These were words I hoped to hear from my grandchildren. As a practicing physician for over forty-five years, I wasn't sure whether futuristic care would include finding a cure for cancer. But that time has arrived.…

“What was cancer, Grandpa?” These were words I hoped to hear from my grandchildren. As a practicing physician for over forty-five years, I wasn’t sure whether futuristic care would include finding a cure for cancer. But that time has arrived.

Unfortunately, this realization came from personal experience as my wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer four years ago. Initially in 2022, we thought it was a slow-growing thyroid cancer that would …

Tech

Clinical informatics is not about the technology

Thomas Powell, MD

October 8, 2026Oct 8, 2026

I have asked the same question in a lot of hospitals, and I have never once received a good answer. Name the three largest technology investments your organization made in the last five years. Now say what clinical outcome each…

I have asked the same question in a lot of hospitals, and I have never once received a good answer.

Name the three largest technology investments your organization made in the last five years. Now say what clinical outcome each one was meant to change, whether it changed, and whether anyone even checked.

The room usually goes completely quiet. Not because the leadership are careless. Most of them are serious, and many …

Policy

How Medicare Advantage prior authorization delays care

Adam Lee

October 8, 2026Oct 8, 2026

Medicare Advantage has become one of the most important parts of the American health care system. Designed as a privately administered alternative to traditional Medicare, the program allows insurers to manage coverage for older adults while receiving payments from the federal government. Supporters argue that Medicare Advantage can reduce unnecessary spending while giving seniors access to benefits that traditional Medicare may not fully provide.

Yet recent scrutiny has raised a more …

Podcast

Signs of depression families miss, and the stigma behind it [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

October 7, 2026Oct 7, 2026

Someone you love says they are fine. They still eat, they still go to work, and no one asks a second time. Nneka Oluoha is an internal medicine physician and the author of a novel about a Nigerian immigrant living…

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Policy

Pharmacy benefit managers and the price no one can see

Matt Hasan, PhD

October 7, 2026Oct 7, 2026

A physician writes a prescription believing the clinical decision has been made. In reality, another decision-making process is just beginning. Between the prescription and the patient sits an increasingly powerful infrastructure of pharmacy benefit managers, insurers, formularies, rebate agreements, pharmacy…

A physician writes a prescription believing the clinical decision has been made. In reality, another decision-making process is just beginning.

Between the prescription and the patient sits an increasingly powerful infrastructure of pharmacy benefit managers, insurers, formularies, rebate agreements, pharmacy networks, prior authorization rules, and specialty pharmacies. Most physicians see only fragments of this system. Patients usually understand even less.

The result is a peculiar form of American medicine: The person making …

Conditions

Living with glycogen storage disease into adulthood

Andrew Williams

October 7, 2026Oct 7, 2026

Both Julieta and Rob went through long, uncertain paths to receiving a correct diagnosis. Julieta was born in 1987 outside a major city in Argentina. Very little information about glycogen storage disease (GSD) was available at the time. Her symptoms…

Both Julieta and Rob went through long, uncertain paths to receiving a correct diagnosis.

Julieta was born in 1987 outside a major city in Argentina. Very little information about glycogen storage disease (GSD) was available at the time. Her symptoms started when she was two months old: failure to thrive, hypoglycemia, and constant crying. Local pediatricians could not diagnose her, and she was referred to a nearby center, then another center …

Tech

AI’s 360-degree view of the patient is missing the family

Nicole Drapeau Gillen

October 7, 2026Oct 7, 2026

In a recent Psychiatric Times interview, Christoph Correll, MD, made a case that every psychiatrist should hear: Artificial intelligence should replace tasks, not people. He described a decision-support platform he helps lead at MedLink Global that would pull together the electronic health record, a short avatar-guided interview before each visit, and the conversation in the exam room, then offer two or three evidence-based treatment options. The goal, in his …

Conditions

Your anesthesia care starts before the operating room

Dr. Girishkumar Modi

October 7, 2026Oct 7, 2026

Many patients meet their anesthesiologist only a few minutes before surgery. So it can look as if our job starts there. Actually, a lot has already happened before you enter the operating room. We are looking at your medical history,…

Many patients meet their anesthesiologist only a few minutes before surgery. So it can look as if our job starts there. Actually, a lot has already happened before you enter the operating room.

We are looking at your medical history, your medicines, previous anesthetics, allergies, heart and lung problems, diabetes, sleep apnea, recent illness, and anything that may affect surgery. We also think about the operation itself. How long will it …

Conditions

Lethal injection and pulmonary edema: a lesson for the ICU

Laurel A. Coons, PhD

October 7, 2026Oct 7, 2026

Before Tennessee attempted to execute Christa Gail Pike on September 30, 2026, she wrote something that captured an important distinction between death and dying. Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of nineteen-year-old Colleen Slemmer, wrote, “I am not afraid to die. I am only nervous about the process.” What made her nervous was not the fact of death itself, but what she might consciously experience …

Policy

A letter to Congress: Repeal the Controlled Substances Act

Richard A. Lawhern, PhD

October 7, 2026Oct 7, 2026

I write as a health care educator and author with thirty years of research experience and over three hundred papers published as author or co-author, several of them widely cited. In that role, I see thousands of emails and social media postings every month from people whose lives are being destroyed by misdirected and frequently outright fraudulent U.S. public health policy on treatment of pain and addiction. The …

Conditions

How to choose a GLP-1 weight loss program

Neil Panchal, DO

October 7, 2026Oct 7, 2026

Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) medications work. Semaglutide and tirzepatide help people lose more weight than any pill or shot we've had before. The harder problem is everything that happens around the drug. In real-world studies, about a third of patients stop…

Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) medications work. Semaglutide and tirzepatide help people lose more weight than any pill or shot we’ve had before. The harder problem is everything that happens around the drug.

In real-world studies, about a third of patients stop treatment within the first month. In one large insurance claims analysis, only about one in twelve adults who started a GLP-1 for weight loss were still taking it three years later. …

Conditions

Why criminal responsibility is not a medical question

Farid Sabet-Sharghi, MD

October 7, 2026Oct 7, 2026

I've watched the coverage of this case the same way most of us have. Clips from the courtroom keep looping across television, podcasts, and every social feed. A mother killed her three children. The hearings are broken into bite-sized moments…

I’ve watched the coverage of this case the same way most of us have. Clips from the courtroom keep looping across television, podcasts, and every social feed. A mother killed her three children. The hearings are broken into bite-sized moments for public consumption. And in the middle of it all sits a long parade of physicians from every specialty, plus the usual lineup of forensic psychologists and psychiatrists, each one …

Physicians

Physician professionalism and the 7 virtues of Bushido

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

October 7, 2026Oct 7, 2026

As a fifth-grade student, I was introduced to Japanese culture through a school program. I lived in Japan on an American military base from 1967 to 1970. I remember learning about tea ceremonies, calligraphy, and the samurai code known as…

At the time, I understood very little of it. What I remembered was the idea that a person should strive to become the best version of himself every day. Not …

Real physician voices, twice a week

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