Monthly Archives: March 2011

Your Medical Records–Sold on eBay! →

Could a complete stranger receive your echocardiogram results in the mail?

Could a homeless guy in Boston end up with your labs in his shopping cart?

Is it possible that your medical records were sold on eBay?

Yes.

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Weirdest Place for Medical Visit →

In my effort to provide timely care for patients, I often end up treating them in some very unusual places. I recently shared a visit I held in the DMV waiting room. When I queried my colleagues on the topic, I learned that many had examined patients in a variety of unusual places including:

Parking lot at shopping mall inside car
Doctor’s dining room table
Hospital hallway
Under a tree in a meadow
Airplane galley
Baseball games

Here’s my latest addition to the list:

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Should iTouch the iPatient? →

In a recent NYT article, Abraham Verghese, a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, relates:

‘This computer record creates what I call an “iPatient” — and this iPatient threatens to become the real focus of our attention, while the real patient in the bed often feels neglected,

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Patients Reinventing Hospitals →

Can we depend upon government-supported health care? As federal and state governments stagger under huge deficits and payments from entitlement programs such as Medicaid and Medicare are being cut back, what’s a hospital to do?

Put patients in charge.

Read full story in Becker’s Hospital Review.

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On Being Human →

Early in my career an elderly woman presented to establish care. When I discovered she was suffering from a urinary tract infection, I reviewed all her treatment options from natural remedies to antibiotics. When I stopped talking, she looked straight at me and said, “What’s the matter, Honey? Don’t you know what you are doing?”

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A Snuggie? Milk & Cookies? →

What’s YOUR fantasy? More and more doctors are putting patients in charge of designing their ideal health-care experience. Share your wildest dreams and I’ll do my best to bring them to life. Promise!

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Ready for Utopian Health Care? →

While ideal clinics are opening all across America, some doctors accuse me of practicing “Alice-in-Wonderland” medicine. When ridiculed, I often wonder: Why?

After all, who could be against ideal health care?

Even the Journal of Family Practice praises our innovative community-focused model. And now our clinic is featured in the newest edition of Harvard School of Public Health’s Renegotiating Health Care,

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My Best Prescriptions →

I’ve been writing prescriptions for twenty years. Early in my career I realized what patients often need can’t be delivered by Pfizer or Merck. Here are some of the best prescriptions I’ve ever written:

Have sex every day!
Quit your job!
Take a one-week vacation at the coast.

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The Best Rx ~ Quit Your Job! →

I get a call this week from Maria, a “frustrated and disgusted” ob/gyn in Pennsylvania. I ask her how she found me. She says she dug out my article, one she’d been carrying around since 2007. After fifteen years in three employed hospital positions, she’s finally ready to quit assembly-line medicine.

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The Best Rx ~ Love →

One of my sweetest patients is John, a man in his fifties with debilitating arthritis. He’s a fast-talking, anxious fellow who returned for some advice. He told me he wanted to stay active and volunteer, and was ready for the companionship of a good woman.

His blood pressure was higher than usual.

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The Best Rx ~ Joy →

Breakthrough cure for pain: LOL

Have you laughed with your doctor lately? Share your story.

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Now Hiring: Medicine’s Martin Luther King →

Enjoy year-round sunshine with a month paid vacation. Earn 300K plus production bonus. No state tax! No call! Daily I’m bombarded with glossy postcards promising the good life.

With so many options, why are physicians fleeing medicine? Some leave for teaching, waitressing, even homemaking. Others escape into administration,

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Should Doctors Receive Tips? →

What do YOU think?

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Falling in Love with Patients →

As Jill leaves, she always says, “I love you!”

Sometimes I whisper. Other times I scream down the hall: “I love you too!”

I think it’s illegal. Or risky. I’m supposed to contain my love, to practice professional distance. But why dissociate from myself or from those I care for?

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Escape from McMedicine →

I was once a factory-farmed physician. Then I escaped.

Six years ago I left my job and invited my community to design an ideal medical clinic. Thousands of physicians nationwide have created similar ideal, patient-centered practices.

Would we ever go back? Nope. Never. But from what did we actually escape?

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