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Health care system design isn’t failing, it’s working

Physician

June 12, 2026

In health care, we often describe what we are experiencing as system failure. We point to clinician burnout, staffing shortages, administrative burden, and the growing distance between those delivering care and those designing it. We talk about breakdowns in communication, gaps in safety, and the increasing strain placed on a workforce asked to adapt faster than it can recover. The language is familiar. The concern is real. But the conclusion …

How insulin drives polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome

Oluyemisi Famuyiwa, MD

Conditions and Diseases

June 12, 2026

One of the most misunderstood aspects of polycystic ovary syndrome, now increasingly reframed as Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome (PMOS), is the role insulin plays in the disorder. For years, insulin resistance in PMOS was discussed primarily through the lens of diabetes risk and abnormal glucose metabolism. Yet insulin’s role in the syndrome appears to extend far beyond blood sugar alone.

What many patients, and even many clinicians outside endocrinology and reproductive …

3 traits the physician leadership model is missing

Bertina Marie Hooks, MD

Physician

June 12, 2026

There is a growing conversation in medicine about leadership. We talk about the need for more physician leaders, more voices at the table, more representation in decision-making spaces. And while these conversations are important, they often overlook a more fundamental issue. The problem is not a lack of physician leadership. It is the model of leadership we continue to promote.

From early training, physicians are conditioned to equate leadership with endurance: …

Why we know the model’s name but not the surgeon’s

Anna Estrin

Conditions and Diseases

June 12, 2026

I spent fifteen years in the world of fashion. Runway shows, parties, exclusive events, beautiful photographs, perfect smiles, the right connections. A world where the outer shell is often valued more than what lies beneath it.

Over those years, I met hundreds of people. Many called themselves friends. Many said all the right things. Many built around themselves an image of success, importance, and influence.

And then, in a single second, everything …

AI in health care is quietly displacing physicians

Matt Hasan, PhD

Health Technology

June 12, 2026

Every physician knows the feeling. You trained for years to think independently, to assess, to judge. Now you spend more than half your workday staring at a screen, entering data into fields someone else designed, responding to alerts someone else configured. The patient is in front of you. The system is between you.

That experience is not just a workflow frustration. It is a signal of something far more consequential that …

Corporate practice of medicine vs. the golden days

Edmond Cabbabe, MD

Physician

June 12, 2026

In the golden days of practicing medicine, the hospitals’ boards were composed of community leaders acting on behalf of the hospitals to raise funds, negotiate insurance contracts, screen and supervise the performance of the key employees, and interact with the government. They used their passion and influence to facilitate the delivery of health care to the communities they served. Most of these board members were volunteers or philanthropists. Few practicing …

The assumptions in medicine that put patients at risk

Christine King, CRNA

Conditions and Diseases

June 12, 2026

We all make assumptions based on beliefs that may or may not be true. We all have made the mistake of judging books by their cover and been wrong. Making assumptions is not always intentional or inherently bad. Our human brain uses these mental shortcuts to classify things in this large, ever-changing world we live in. We learn very early to classify things by color and shape, and this system …

Nursing during the Holocaust, one IV at a time

Dr. Jonathan Hammel

Physician

June 12, 2026

Lena spotted Dr. Kreindl, who without his cigarette, seemed a bit lost. But he knew better than to light up: The Gestapo would have never tolerated such an act of freedom, coming from a Jew.

“Ah, there you are,” he said. “Listen, it’s quite simple. Most of these patients have ingested large doses of Veronal. Do you know this drug? It’s a highly powerful sedative. Anyway, many of these people were …

Why diversity in medicine is a clinical intervention

Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA

Medical Education

June 12, 2026

Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) had a reasonable institutional story to tell.

U.S. Rep. Rich McCormick, MD, MBA, is an alumnus. He is an emergency medicine physician, a Marine veteran, a former student body president, and the first MSM graduate elected to Congress. From the perspective of a communications office, the announcement almost writes itself: alumnus returns home to deliver the commencement speech; physician-leader addresses the next generation; a school devoted …

Actual Intelligence: the skill AI cannot replace

Alan P. Feren, MD

Health Technology

June 12, 2026

Artificial intelligence is no longer arriving in medicine. It has arrived. The American Medical Association’s 2026 Physician Survey found that 81 percent of physicians now use AI in their practices, more than double the 38 percent who reported using it in 2023. In three years it went from a minority tool to a default one, concentrated most heavily in documentation and summarization, the workflows closest to how we think.

The same …

Physician burnout is not your fault, and here’s why blaming yourself keeps you stuck [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

June 11, 2026

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!

What if the cure for physician burnout has been making it worse the whole time? Lisa Rubiano, an internal medicine physician and physician coach, spent over a decade as a hospitalist before burning out in 2021 and stepping back to figure out …

Recording medical visits is your legal right

Laurel A. Coons, PhD

Conditions and Diseases

June 11, 2026

Patients are not guests in their own medical care. Their bodies are examined, their symptoms interpreted, their diagnoses explained, their treatment risks discussed, their consent sought, and their lives affected by the plan that follows. Yet when patients try to lawfully document those care conversations, they are too often treated as if they are doing something improper. They are told they are “not allowed” to record. They are told it …

Health care consolidation is the biggest reform barrier

John E. McDonough, DPH, MPA

Health Policy

June 11, 2026

An excerpt from America’s Wrong Turn: US Health Care in the Neoliberal Era.

Let’s consider U.S. corporate consolidation and antitrust policy in the context of health and medical care sectors. Concentration, mergers, and acquisitions are vital parts of corporate strategy among all forms of health and medical firms, a phenomenon at every stage and level across our dizzyingly complex system. In this section, we examine insurers, hospitals, physicians, pharmaceuticals, and …

Health care investing needs a doctor in the room

Harsha Moole, MD

Physician Finance

June 11, 2026

A conference table. Six to ten people around it. A health care startup is being evaluated for a multimillion-dollar investment. The people in the room are smart, with MBAs from top programs, former management consultants, ex-bankers who pivoted into health care venture capital. They have built financial models, analyzed market sizing data, and stress-tested the company’s revenue projections.

They are about to commit capital to a product designed for use inside …

AI bias in health care reads the writer, not the symptom

Craig Hauben, MPA

Health Technology

June 11, 2026

A few weeks ago I wrote here about the eGFR race correction, the flawed formula that overestimated kidney function in Black patients for twenty years while clinicians trusted the number on the screen. The piece ended with a warning that the same failure is being rebuilt with AI, minus the part where anyone can inspect the formula. Readers sent back the natural question. If the next eGFR is already …

How Becerra and Hilton differ on California health care

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

Health Policy

June 11, 2026

This article tries to be unbiased and compares Xavier Becerra (Democrat, former U.S. HHS Secretary, California AG, and Congressman) and Steve Hilton (Republican, former Fox News host, British-born American conservative political commentator, author, entrepreneur, and former adviser) contrasting approaches to health care.

Becerra emphasizes government-led expansion of access, protections against federal rollbacks, cost controls via regulation and purchasing power, and a long-term vision for universal coverage. Hilton focuses on reducing government …

Diagnosis shock is the missing piece in patient encounters

Judith A. Swack, PhD

Conditions and Diseases

June 11, 2026

In a recent piece on KevinMD, patient advocate Alan P. Feren explores what he calls “unfinishedness” in medicine: the gap between what clinicians consider a complete visit and what patients actually experience. His observation is both valid and important: Physicians may achieve administrative closure through documentation, diagnoses, and treatment plans, yet patients can leave feeling confused, overwhelmed, or adrift.

However, there is a critical piece missing from this conversation, one …

When a patient attacks you, it changes your life

Timothy Lesaca, MD

Physician

June 11, 2026

I did not intend to visit an emotionally dark place. But now I think I was destined to be there, to maybe find some light.

Recently, I began a literature review of articles on workplace aggression toward mental health clinicians. It was meant to be a routine process. Instead, I became focused on research exploring how workplace violence fundamentally changes people, and how, for some, perceptions of self and others are …

Rural health care delivery is not a coverage problem

Vance Alm, MD

Physician

June 11, 2026

Earl Haskell doesn’t exist. But thousands of patients exactly like him do. They live in counties where the nearest hospital is more than an hour away. Where the local clinic closed years ago. Where a chest pain isn’t just a symptom, it’s a logistical problem. Earl is a composite. His reality is not.

He lives in Loving County, Texas, the least populated county in the United States. On a map, it …

The direct primary care HSA rule did not fix access

Dana Y. Lujan, MBA

Health Policy

June 11, 2026

In a few weeks, the direct care community will celebrate the one-year anniversary of getting what it had been asking for. By the end of the first quarter, before the rule had been in effect for a single full billing cycle, it was already clear that the more consequential effect was not affordability. It was market design. As I wrote in January, when tax-advantaged dollars enter a care model, they …

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