Kevin Pho is a practicing, board-certified internal medicine physician, a national media commentator, co-author of the book, Establishing, Managing, and Protecting Your Online Reputation: A Social Media Guide for Physicians and Medical Practices, and an acclaimed keynote speaker. He is founder and editor, KevinMD.com, and founder, Physician Speaking by KevinMD.
These perspectives define his unique social media journey, and his story has brought audiences to their feet.
Kevin shares his story nationwide with both clinicians and non-clinicians, and regularly keynotes major conferences.
Kevin built the KevinMD platform from scratch in 2004. It now receives over 3 million monthly page views, and exceeds 250,000 followers on Facebook and Twitter. Kevin was named the web’s top social media influencer in health care and medicine. The New York Times called KevinMD “a highly-coveted publishing place for doctors and patients.” Forbes called KevinMD a “must-read health blog.” And CNN named @KevinMD one of its five recommended Twitter health feeds.
Kevin’s signature keynote, “Connect and be heard: Make a difference in heath care with social media,” takes your audience through Kevin’s social media journey since 2004. With video, audio, and an emphasis on storytelling, he inspires audiences to use social media and be health care influencers in the following ways:
Kevin is the founder of Physician Speaking by KevinMD and is available for speaking opportunities. Please contact us for inquiries.
Kevin Pho is a practicing, board-certified internal medicine physician, a national media commentator, co-author of the book, Establishing, Managing, and Protecting Your Online Reputation: A Social Media Guide for Physicians and Medical Practices, and an acclaimed keynote speaker. He is founder and editor, KevinMD.com, and founder, Physician Speaking by KevinMD.
These perspectives define his unique social media journey, and his story has brought audiences to their feet.
Kevin shares his story nationwide with both clinicians and non-clinicians, and regularly keynotes major conferences.
Kevin built the KevinMD platform from scratch in 2004. It now receives over 3 million monthly page views, and exceeds 250,000 followers on Facebook and Twitter. Kevin was named the web’s top social media influencer in health care and medicine. The New York Times called KevinMD “a highly-coveted publishing place for doctors and patients.” Forbes called KevinMD a “must-read health blog.” And CNN named @KevinMD one of its five recommended Twitter health feeds.
Kevin’s signature keynote, “Connect and be heard: Make a difference in heath care with social media,” takes your audience through Kevin’s social media journey since 2004. With video, audio, and an emphasis on storytelling, he inspires audiences to use social media and be health care influencers in the following ways:
Kevin is the founder of Physician Speaking by KevinMD and is available for speaking opportunities. Please contact us for inquiries.
With the patent for Lipitor expiring, Pfizer is considering selling an OTC version of the statin.
It’s generated a firestorm of debate, with doctors speculating on the impact for patients.
According to Pharmalot, “an OTC version would allow Pfizer to capture some of the sales that will be lost when the Lipitor patent expires in November. In fact, Pfizer execs recently changed …
Hospitalists save money. Until the patient leaves the hospital, at least.
A recent study from the Annals of Internal Medicine ignited debate over the cost effectiveness of hospitalists. Looking at Medicare patients from 2001 to 2006, researchers found that “those who were followed by a primary care physician spent about half a day more at the hospital, costing Medicare …
If you’re a physician or hospital that relies on Medicare payments, grim times are ahead. Yes, even worse than the scheduled 29% payment cut that’s scheduled to go into effect in 2013. Emergency physician Shadowfax calls the debt deal “a terrible deal for health care providers.”
Under the contentious debt ceiling agreement, significant cuts in Medicare dollars will be made. …
The following op-ed was published on June 5, 2011 in USA Today.
A patient recently asked me if I had heard about the new “wonder drugs” used to treat skin cancer. Indeed, I had. In a widely reported story in early June, two novel cancer drugs were found to benefit patients with advanced melanoma, a devastating form of skin cancer. These …
Whenever I talk about the cost of medical education, I like to bring up this chart. It starkly illustrates just how expensive it is to train a doctor in the United States, compared to Canada and France.
New York Times contributor Pauline Chen wrote a column on the issue recently. Most doctors graduate with a debt exceeding $150,000, and …
Speed dating to find the next generation of doctors? Well, yes, in a way.
The New York Times recently wrote about the admissions process at Virginia Tech Carilion, where students are chosen as much for their interpersonal qualities as their academic aptitude.
Using the so-called “multiple mini interview,” prospective medical students are ushered in a series of 9 interviews, each designed to test …
Health care is a team sport, and one of the most important members is the office receptionist.
Receptionists are often the first people patients see when the visit the clinic. And those first impressions count.
In a recent piece from the New York Times, Pauline Chen notes a study of the responsibilities of the medical receptionist, and finds they impact …
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) recently released their recommendations for breast cancer screening.
Previously, they had recommended a mammogram every 1 to 2 years for women between the ages of 40 to 49.
Now, they recommend more intensive screening:
Due to the high incidence of breast cancer in the US and the potential to reduce deaths from it when caught …
The following op-ed was published on June 1st, 2011 in the New York Times’ Room for Debate blog.
Medicare should stop paying for prostate cancer screening in men over the age of 75.
You may be surprised to hear that, especially coming from a primary care doctor. But evidence is mounting that screening for prostate cancer is not only ineffective in older men, but may actually be harmful.
The cornerstone of …
After playing around with Google+ today, I’ve come away on a more positive note than my speculative post on Google’s social network recently.
Before experiencing Google+, I asked whether doctors can separate their personal and professional relationships, and how the Google Circles feature would help.
Well, if Google+ ever takes off for physicians, it will be because of Circles.
Tech blogs, …
Google has announced its social networking product, Google+.
I haven’t received an invite yet, so I don’t have first-hand experience with the service. But reading the major tech blogs’ take from Engadget, TechCrunch and Mashable, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect.
What should doctors know about about Google+?
Obviously, this is Google’s last, best attempt to …
The government is going to find out about the primary care physician shortage for themselves.
They’re resorting to “mystery shoppers,” used frequently in other industries, to see what the wait times really are for a new primary care doctor. As mentioned before, come 2014, there will be over 30 million newly insured patients looking for a doctor. This will further stress a system short of primary care resources.
Doctors, as …
Google Health is dead.
There have been plenty of post-mortems as to why, ranging from the fact that it’s not social enough (uh … no), to the realization that only a minority of practices have electronic medical records, yet alone a patient portal that can incorporate PHRs like Google Health.
I’ll chip in with my own reason — it suffered from “one more thing” syndrome.
PHRs today aren’t seamlessly incorporated into …
The following op-ed was published on June 7, 2011 in USA Today.
More than ever, I find myself fielding questions from patients about the health care reform law. The most common one is, “How will reform affect me?” It’s a complicated question, with a different answer for each patient. But as the law’s full effects unfold, one of the more significant changes will be in how patients interact with their …
One of the major efforts of the Affordable Care Act is to consolidate physician groups, so they can be modeled after integrated health systems like the Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic or California’s Kaiser Permanente.
According to health reformers, these integrated systems can reduce variation in care, which improves quality, and potentially reduces costs.
There’s been a major effort to re-organize hospitals and physicians under guises of Patient Centered Medical Homes and Read more…
The American Medical Association recently released its membership numbers, and they’re declining.
According to MedPage Today, the AMA “saw another steep drop in its membership in 2010 — this time losing about 12,000 members or 5% of its total membership.”
It’s been well publicized that the AMA only represents a minority percentage of physicians, depending on what you read, it’s between 20 and 30%. But it seems many physicians have little …
I’ve heard that a few academic medical centers, the identities which I will keep anonymous, are advising incoming medical residents to stay off social media. Meaning, they have to close their blogs, and shutter their Twitter or Facebook accounts.
As hospitals and doctors try to best use social media, and prevent damage from its improper use, taking the extreme measure of forbidding doctors in training from utilizing social is …
For the past few Sundays, the New York Times has published provocative op-eds involving physicians.
The first tackled physician bullying. Next was the cost of medical education. And, most recently, the phenomenon of part-time, mostly female, physicians.
This is obviously a live-wire topic, sure to generate passionate commentary.
In the piece, anesthesiologist Karen S. Sibert goes over ramifications of part-time physicians. …
The following column was published on May 28, 2011 in FoxNews.com.
Theresa Brown’s New York Times op-ed, Physician, Heel Thyself, recently introduced hospital bullying into the national health care conversation.
In it, she recounted a hospital vignette while working as an oncology nurse. A patient asked a doctor who should he blame for a late test result. The …
This past spring, I took the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Maintenance of Certification (MOC) exam.
7 weeks later, I received my results. Thankfully, I passed.
This was not entirely a surprise, as the pass rate for first-time test takers was 88%. But it definitely requires some studying. It’s not a gimmie.
Considering that I last took my board exam in …
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