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.
The recurring narrative among health reformers is that hospitals that provide more care raise health costs, but don’t necessarily improve quality.
This has lead to a backlash against so-called “aggressive” hospitals and doctors, with upcoming financial penalties to match.
But the situation, as always, appears to be more nuanced than that.
In her column in the New York Times, Pauline Chen looks at …
Abdominal pain is the bane of many emergency physicians.
Recently, I wrote how CT scans are on the rise in the ER. Much of those scans look for potential causes of abdominal pain.
In an essay from TIME, Zachary Meisel discusses why abdominal pain, in his words, is the doctor’s “booby prize.” And when you consider that there are 7 million visits annually by people who report abdominal pain, that’s a …
Health reformers propose the proliferation of integrated health systems, like the Mayo Clinic or Kaiser Permanente, which, according to the Dartmouth Atlas, lead to better patient care and improved cost control.
To that end, Accountable Care Organizations have been a major part of health reform, changing the way health care is delivered.
Never mind that patients may not be receptive to the new model, but the creation of these large, integrated physician-hospital …
Female doctors make less than male physicians.
That conclusion gained major media traction recently. A recent post on KevinMD.com by medical student Emily Lu had some great conversation discussing some reasons why women make less money in medicine.
To recap, the study from Health Affairs concluded that,
newly trained physicians who are women are being paid significantly lower salaries than their male counterparts according to a new study. The authors identify …
In a guest post last year, physician-author Richard Reece commented that the individual mandate may collapse health reform.
Those words came to mind as Judge Vinson not only ruled the individual mandate unconstitutional, but the entire Affordable Care Act, as well.
Nobody likes to be mandated to do anything, least of all purchase health insurance, and this was always the sticking point with the current iteration of health reform.
So, what …
I recently pointed to a BMJ study concluding that pay for performance doesn’t seem to motivate doctors. It has been picking up steam in major media with TIME, for instance, saying, “Money isn’t everything, even to doctors.”
So much is riding on the concept of pay for performance, that it’s hard to fathom what other options there are should it fail. And there’s mounting evidence that it will.
Aaron Carroll, a …
Electronic medical records and pay for performance are among the ways health reformers are going to improve patient care.
It’s a fundamental shift in how doctors practice, with more practices adopting expensive EMRs. And with the advent of Accountable Care Organizations, doctors will soon be compensated in part by quality measures.
But will they work? Well, the jury’s still out.
Two articles caught my eye recently.
The first, from the WSJ’s Health Blog, reports …
Did you know that one-third of the country’s physicians are over the age of 65?
That’s right, there’s a good chance that your doctor is on Medicare. That’s a concern, because physicians aren’t immune to the ails of aging, and are just as prone as patients to succumb to the effects of Parkinson’s or various types of dementias.
Not comforting if you’re about to undergo an operation, for instance. And absolutely frightening when …
Many doctors roll their eyes whenever patients bring in a stack of research they printed out, stemming from a Google search of their symptoms.
A piece by Zachary Meisel in TIME.com describes a familiar scenario:
The medical intern started her presentation with an eye roll. “The patient in Room 3 had some blood in the toilet bowl this morning and is …
I wrote last year in USA Today about the impact of physician burnout. Not only do doctors suffer, but so do their patients.
Burnout starts early in residency, with entering interns having a depression rate of 4%, similar to the general public. But after the first year of residency, that number balloons to 25%.
Now, another study adds fuel to this disturbing trend.
A paper published in the Archives of General Surgery …
Whenever I refer a patient to a specialist, a copy of the patient’s recent notes, labs and diagnostic tests is faxed to the specialist — in many cases, prior to their visit.
And most of the time, after they see the specialist, I receive a fax back describing what happened.
You’d think this is standard procedure, but it doesn’t happen as often as it should.
A study from the Archives of Internal Medicine …
There are plenty of instructional videos on YouTube — in fact, I use them not infrequently to show patients educational videos.
But who uploads them, and are they medically reputable?
Like most social media sites, YouTube’s quality of information is variable. And no where is that more apparent than in CPR videos. There are videos that use sex to teach CPR (a facetious take), or rap (a legitimate educational video …
Radiation from CT scans needs to be better taught to patients, as their risks are real.
It’s the best way to help curb the rampant ordering of these tests. Unfortunately, we aren’t doing a very good job.
In a study from the Annals of Emergency Medicine, most patients underestimate their risk from radiation.
When asked to compare the amount of radiation from a CT scan to the amount that Hiroshima …
Doctors today are wary about treating chronic pain.
One of the main worries is precipitating fatal opioid overdoses. Indeed, according to the CDC, and reported by American Medical News, “fatal opioid overdoses tripled to nearly 14,000 from 1999 to 2006 … [and] emergency department visits involving opioids more than doubled to nearly 306,000 between 2004 and 2008.”
Requiring chronic pain patients to sign pain contracts is a way to mitigate this risk.
But …
In a recent New England Journal of Medicine, a perspective piece on what to do with fatigued surgeons is generating debate.
The issue of work-hour restrictions has been a controversial issue when it comes to doctors in training, something that I wrote about earlier in the year in USA Today. But once doctors graduate and practice in the real world, there are no rules.
As summarized in the WSJ’s Health Blog, …
Regular readers of this blog know that the mere introduction of an electronic medical record doesn’t necessarily guarantee better patient care.
There are multiple reasons for that, including the fact that many systems are archaic in nature, counter-intuitive, and doctors are forced to learn multiple systems.
Yesterday, the WSJ’s Health Blog posted a study showing that hospitals with an EMR don’t necessarily have better quality measures.
Shocker.
According Rand Corp.,
trying to …
I’ve written in the past that more medicine and tests do not necessarily reflect better care.
There is no test that is 100% specific or sensitive. That means tests may be positive, when, in fact, there is no disease (“false positive”), or tests may be negative in the presence of disease (“false negative”).
It’s the latter that often gets the most media attention, often trumpeted as missed diagnoses, but false positives …
Primary care physicians often have to see patients with a litany of issues. Often within a span of a 15-minute office visit.
This places the doctor in the middle of a tension — spend more time with the patient to address all of the concerns, but risk the wrath of patients scheduled afterwards, who are then forced to wait.
And, in some cases, it’s simply impossible to adequately address every patient question …
Mediation has been cited as a way to lower the cost of litigation and compensate injured patients without going through the ordeal of a trial.
In post from the WSJ Health Blog, the problem is few doctors are participating.
That’s a problem.
A study from a law journal looked at 31 cases that went to mediation, and found that,
of those cases, 16 were settled at mediation, 5 settled afterward and 10 weren’t …
Early last year, I wrote that conservatives should have been happy with health reform.
Maybe they just didn’t realize it yet, because they’re rejoicing after yesterday’s news of a federal judge ruling the individual mandate unconstitutional.
But by supporting repeal, conservatives should be careful what they wish for.
The fact is, the Affordable Care Act is a moderate piece of legislation. There’s no public option. It leaves private insurers intact. There is …
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