The Podcast by KevinMD

Medicare will pay your practice to keep chronically ill patients out of the hospital, so why do most practices leave that money unused? Rachel Yates, a registered nurse and health care executive, joins to explain two reimbursement programs Medicare introduced in 2024, Community Health Integration and Principal Illness Navigation, and why two years later most practices still are not using them. This episode is based on her article "...

When a patient's heart stops, the person leading the code is running on memory alone, and memory fails under that kind of pressure. Michael Peck is an anesthesiologist and retired faculty member at George Washington University who spent more than 30 years watching skilled clinicians get cognitively overwhelmed during a cardiac arrest. In this episode he explains why the problem is not a lack of training but the hard limits of human...

Medicare for All keeps dying in Congress. So what would actually get the major players to agree on universal coverage? Health care journalist Ken Terry returns to lay out a different model, one that keeps insurance companies in the system while putting primary care doctors back in charge of basic care. This episode is based on his article "A Medicare for All alternative that keeps insurers in," published on KevinMD. You will learn ...

For 23 years, an emergency physician stayed calm in the chaos and held the line. Then one night he sat in the hospital parking lot, unable to start his car and drive home. In this episode, Kenneth Scott Burnham shares how depression crept up on him gradually, how his clinical training gave him the tools to deny it for years, and what he learned once he was the patient instead of the doctor. He explains why the health care system is...

For 15 years, a primary care physician saw more than 22 patients a day and slowly lost herself to exhaustion. It followed her home every night and onto every vacation. In this episode, Jerina Gani explains how she broke that cycle by doing the opposite of what administrators push: she saw fewer patients, gave each one more time, and found her life again. The counterintuitive twist is that slowing down did not cost her money. By bil...

Clinicians are treated as invincible, so when their own mental health suffers, many stay silent. Namit Choksi, a physician entrepreneur and health care executive, joins to explain how credentialing forms and a culture that treats wellbeing as a perk push doctors to hide depression, anxiety, and substance use until they reach a breaking point. You will hear why disclosing a behavioral health condition can threaten a clinician's malp...

Clinicians are pushed to do more with less, until many quietly conclude they are not enough. J. C. Sue, a family medicine physician and adjunct faculty member, returns to unpack where that belief comes from and why it does so much damage across medical school, residency, and practice. You will hear how the business side of medicine and a competitive training culture teach doctors that they must be perfect, why serving beyond your r...

Orthopedic surgeon Kevin J. Campbell discusses the article "Understanding Generation 2 patient engagement platforms." Kevin discusses the article through a practical distinction between first-generation patient engagement tools that increase access but also increase staff workload, and second-generation platforms designed to answer routine patient questions without pulling every message into an inbox. He explains why portals, apps,...

Most women lose feeling in their chest after a mastectomy, and almost no one warns them ahead of time. Emily Hansen, a patient advocate who has spent nearly two decades in health care communication working with surgeons and breast cancer survivors, joins to explain a consequence of survivorship that stays largely hidden. You will learn why loss of sensation is nearly universal after mastectomy, why nerves are among the slowest tiss...

Most doctor visits do not fail in the room. They fail after you walk out, holding a plan and no clear idea of when something has gone wrong enough to call back. In this episode, retired surgeon and patient advocate Alan P. Feren explains why "call me if it gets worse" is not real guidance, and what clear instructions actually look like. He argues that sharing responsibility with patients only works when both sides share clarity, be...

Doctors spend over a decade training and then quietly leave a fortune on the table when they handle their own money. In this episode, economics professor Hernan Moscoso Boedo explains why high income and years of schooling do not make physicians good investors. He compares the way doctors avoid the stock market to the way some people distrust vaccines, not because they understand the science, but because they do not trust the syste...

Most physicians who feel stuck in a job could actually afford to leave. They just can't stomach what the worst week might look like. Stanley Liu, cardiologist and fiduciary financial planner, discusses the KevinMD article "Physician career choices come down to risk tolerance." You will hear the gap between risk capacity (what your finances can actually absorb) and risk tolerance (what you can emotionally accept), why the two are no...

A patient with a dying leg won't drive 20 miles for care. In Devin Zarkowsky's town, that's not a hypothetical. Vascular surgeon Devin Zarkowsky runs a solo office-based practice in a San Diego County town where peripheral arterial disease patients had nowhere local to go, and Jason McKittrick is the executive director of the Office-Based Facility Association. They discuss the KevinMD article "Why local care matters for peripheral ...

A week off does not fix burnout. The same problems are waiting when you get home, and the same person is walking back into them. Stacey Funt is a radiologist who runs a boutique wellness adventure travel company, mostly for women in their 40s through 60s, including a high share of physicians. She discusses the KevinMD article "Why immersive travel may be a powerful tool for behavior change." You will hear the science behind identit...

Calling a doctor a provider sounds harmless. The American College of Physicians says it isn't. Janet Jokela, former treasurer of the American College of Physicians, professor, and medical educator, discusses the KevinMD article "Physician vs. provider is an ethics issue, not just style." She walks through how the word "provider" entered medicine through Medicare in 1965 and ended up lumping physicians together with hospitals and in...

Most clinical research treats patients like data points. What gets lost when researchers stop listening to the people they study, and what does it cost the science itself? Niharika Singh is a biomedical engineer and pre-medical student with research experience at Genentech, Abbott, AstraZeneca, and the Keck School of Medicine, and a global ambassador with the United Nations SURGhub. She discusses the KevinMD article "Patient involv...

A 30 to 40 percent Medicare cut just hit the doctors who keep your local hospital running, and the policy meant to stop hospital monopolies is accelerating them instead. John Birkmeyer, president of the medical group at Sound Physicians and a former Dartmouth health services researcher, discusses the KevinMD article "Medicare practice expense cuts will hurt patients." You'll hear how CMS quietly slashed the practice expense portion...

Your child is messaging neo-Nazis on Discord, role-playing the Columbine shooting on Roblox, or making fan art of mass killers, and you have no idea. That is the pattern Matthew Turner, an emergency medicine physician at Hershey Medical Center, is now seeing in his pediatric ER, where parents bring in children after spotting a chat-message leak that exposes months of online radicalization. He discusses the KevinMD article "The true...

Imagine being penalized for delivering good care to your frailest patients. Medicare's quality scoring program was built for healthy outpatients, not the elderly residents of nursing homes, but it is the system doctors who round in skilled nursing facilities are forced to play. Steve Buslovich, a physician executive and geriatrician, discusses the KevinMD article "How Medicare's MIPS impacts skilled nursing facilities and clinician...