Medical

I turned to my 2-year old daughter with a simple ask: “Can you worry about tomorrow for me?” Blank stare. “All I am asking is that you worry about tomorrow. Just follow the lead of us adults who make it look easy. Now, can you do that for daddy? (Don’t you know about the latest…

“I can’t fight you anymore. It’s you I’m fighting for.” -Ordinary Love by U2 I’m exhausted.  As the pandemic rages on, the mental toll of dealing with COVID-19 has started to wear on me.  As a practicing hospitalist in the Midwest impacted by one of the many hotspots caused by the meatpacking industry, I have…

This time of COVID-19 has brought us to a scenario of scale and scope that most had never planned for. Whether you are at a small practice or a large one, you are likely looking for ways to rapidly evolve your business and patient care processes to survive this global pandemic. Many physician practices are…

In a perfect world, an electronic medical record would aggregate a patient’s medical information from all health care providers into a single, comprehensive record that could be easily accessed by any provider with the patient’s permission. This information could reduce the risk of medical errors, duplicate testing, and inappropriate treatment and the associated cost of…

During the height of the coronavirus pandemic, hospital edicts issued to protect patients would expose institutional frailties. The drastic implementation of nationwide telehealth measures would detrimentally affect patients who lacked access to health care and were unaccustomed to using digital technology. Many of these “digitally unprepared” patients were single, older, low-income, black patients who relied…

At the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, 46 million people were placed under a 76-day lockdown in Wuhan, China. The conversation around this initial story centered on the resilience of that population, isolating in the face of an unknown and deadly threat. Following the further spread of the virus, countless messages of unity and hope…

Game of Thrones has become a focus of American pop culture over the last eight years. Even now, almost a year after the finale aired, people are still discussing the impact of the show and the controversial last season. Many of us were hoping to finally get answers to questions we have been asking since…

Smithfield Foods, the nation’s largest pork producer, closed its Sioux Falls, SD, slaughterhouse after many Smithfield employees grew sick. Tyson Foods closed its Columbus Junction, IA pork slaughterhouse in April, according to the Wall Street Journal. While many U.S. slaughterhouses are closing, pork slaughterhouses and pork producers are bracing for another coronavirus challenge: a virus…