Independent Physicians Fight to Reclaim Patient Stewardship The innovative physician leader Dr. Sachin H. Jain recently said “One of the greatest opportunities to put healthcare back on track is to unlock the latent power of the many remaining independent physicians. And making them owners of change, not objects of it.” Well, the swinging health care pendulum has…

Thoughts On Carelessness — Modern Health Care: Flying by the Seat of our Pants. Imagine how you would feel if one day you received the tragic news that your mother, wife, or sister had had the horrible misfortune to be the one woman killed by an exploding engine on a popular airline. What a tragedy it would be, what a sad moment in your…

Physician Grounded; Patient Care over Self Care; The Imperative of Patient Care Physician is Grounded Involuntarily The long list of causes of Physician Disruption just got longer. Three days ago, Dr. David Dao was forcibly ejected from United Airlines Flight 3411, making news that went viral globally. Much has been…

Definition; Cognition and Standard of Living; Characteristics; Enabling Technologies; Rationale In my posts and conversations, I often reference the notion of Optimal Health. Because it doesn’t take much these days to get me on my soap box, I quickly slip into rants about why our health care system is so…

On the Silencing of Physicians; Health Care IT; and Eroding Value in Medicine It has been a long time coming, but the silencing of physician leaders is at last taking its toll on hospital administrators. If you haven’t been aware, the past five years have been highly disruptive for doctors…

Physician Suicide I just finished reading yet another article about the gloomy situation that faces so many of my fellow physicians today (http://bit.ly/2gTK6Yp). I’m struck by how often these stories describe physicians as being “on the front lines” or “in the trenches.” …

Talking with a dear friend about the great strides she is making on chemotherapy, we’re both celebrating the shrinkage of her tumors. But she’s left with a nervous system that is failing her, as the poisonous chemotherapy damages her healthy cells, too. It made me realize that patients on chemo…