Tag Archives: provider communication

Racial/Ethnic Concordance and Doctor Communication

By | March 14, 2024

Patient-provider racial/ethnic concordance (i.e., physician and patient identify as the same race/ethnicity) has emerged as one key suggestion for mitigating healthcare disparities. Past research has underlined its benefits, including improved infant mortality and more appropriate prescription regimens. However, the sum of the evidence remains unclear and many facets of the patient-provider relationship have yet to… Read More »

Blood-Based Biomarker Tests Address Unmet Need in Alzheimer’s Disease Care

By | September 1, 2022

The Alzheimer’s Association’s 2021 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures report [PDF] shares that currently, six million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease, a number that has increased 145% since the turn of the century.  Around the world, there are 50 million people living with Alzheimer’s disease or related dementia. Only a quarter of would-be patients… Read More »

Core Principles of Health Equity

By | April 11, 2019

I have been lucky enough in my career so far to visit communities around the United States to support public health efforts. While every community is different, one experience has remained the same: I am an outsider, and often a privileged one at that. Working across so many communities has given me a lot of… Read More »

Engaging Communities & Patients in Research

Engaging patients and families in their care has been a longstanding goal for quality improvement. Engaging patients and communities in research is an emerging field of work and collaboration, and a recent Medical Care article discusses some similarities and differences between engaging patients and communities. Why do we engage communities and patients in research? To create… Read More »

“What the Eyes Don’t See” – A call to look beyond our clinic walls

By | September 6, 2018

Last Tuesday I saw eight patients in my morning clinic; I felt like I did a lot. I saw Ms. S, a sixty-two-year-old lady with high blood pressure and diabetes; we chatted about her cats while I checked her feet and titrated her insulin. I treated my 9:30 am patient with some antibiotics for a… Read More »

WhatsApp Doc? Connecting Specialists to General Practitioners in India

By | July 24, 2018

In India, cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), specifically coronary heart disease and congestive heart failure, are leading causes of disability and death. The large projected population of patients with CVDs in the coming years poses one of the biggest threats to this fast developing nation’s future. The crushing magnitude of the problem is exacerbated in rural areas where… Read More »

The cost of a box of hope

By | April 2, 2018

There’s a box on my mom’s desk. It’s smaller than a shoe box, and unremarkable unless you know what’s in it, how it got there and why it represents several important things that are wrong with how we treat people with terminal cancer. The box contains 28 doses of two drugs, or one “cycle” of… Read More »

Opportunistic Salpingectomy: How is this Not Totally a Thing?

By | September 18, 2019

The name doesn’t exactly help. But before we discuss rebranding, a brief introduction to the concept . . . Salpingectomy refers to surgical removal of one (unilateral) or both (bilateral) fallopian tubes. It is thus a surgical option for female sterilization—but also drastically reduces a woman’s risk of ovarian cancer. This is huge. Ovarian cancer… Read More »

Improving the Patient Care Experience among Persons of Varying Race, Ethnicities, and Languages

By | November 24, 2017

Improving the overall patient care experience is an essential focus for organizations as healthcare delivery continues to evolve. The US Department of Health & Human Services Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) notes patient experience as an integral component of healthcare quality, which includes “several aspects of healthcare delivery that patients value highly when… Read More »

Reducing Ambulatory Malpractice and Safety Risk: Results of the Massachusetts PROMISES Project

By | August 16, 2017

Every physician fears being sued. Almost half of primary care doctors are subject to a malpractice lawsuit at some point in their careers. In some quarters, physicians are fatalistic about this fact. I have heard colleagues say: “It’s going to happen at some point, I know it.” But since the publication of the Institute of… Read More »

Intimate Partner Violence: The Under-Addressed Pandemic

By | March 21, 2017

Violence against women and girls is an international concern that cuts across all sectors of society. The United Nations defines violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary… Read More »

Burnout among physicians and nurses

By | December 19, 2016

Private practitioners are busy people between caring for their patients, recording and documenting data, going to meetings, keeping up with new treatment modalities, and running a practice group. They follow a tight schedule, have multiple sources of pressure, and suffer from burnout. Stress occurs when a person is drained of energy, but can recover. In the case of… Read More »

Data sharing between patient-centered medical homes and addiction treatment providers

By | November 14, 2016

In my medical practice, lacking the tools to communicate meaningfully with other providers who are caring for my patients is a daily frustration. This is only magnified when it comes to caring for my most vulnerable patients who have difficulty communicating for themselves, such as those suffering from substance use disorders (SUDs), so I was… Read More »

The Person-Centered Wellness Home: Reflections on a Conversation with Dr. Thelma Mielenz

By | October 31, 2016

With the mania of the presidential election in full tilt and the election just days away, it’s hard to have a rational public discussion about health care.  Supporters of the two presidential candidates have drawn a deep and divisive line (or rather a tectonic fissure) in the sand about health care reform.  This is due, in great part, to the bombastic, and ultimately… Read More »

Hostility During Training: Primary Care Disparagement

By | October 6, 2016

The lack of primary care infrastructure in the U.S. has been blamed for our extremely high health expenditures, as we spend about 2.5 times what other comparable countries spend (OECD Health at a Glance) without better health outcomes. Increasing our primary care workforce is an important part of controlling health care costs while also providing… Read More »

Freezing or boiling? Measuring workplace climate in primary care

By | October 4, 2016

Provider burnout and turnover [PDF] is a major challenge for many community health centers. One factor contributing to this problem is workplace climate, or what the experience of working at the health center is like. As anyone in primary care will tell you, at times it can be overwhelming. Thus it was with great interest that… Read More »

Tools to improve coordination in primary care

By | July 28, 2016

Last month, I left readers with a bit of cliffhanger: How do we actually improve care coordination? Last time, I suggested there were some great ideas, and now it’s time to delve into three promising strategies: 1) individualize and personalize the electronic medical record (EMR); 2. fix the hospital discharge process; and 3) make it a part of normal practice to measure care coordination. Read on for more about each of these tools…

Is Care Coordination the Magic Bullet in Primary Care?

By | June 14, 2016

Decades of thoughtful research into how we design health care systems has shown that primary care is essential.  We know enough to confidently say that systems responsible for the overall health of patients (like health insurance plans or the Veterans Administration) that choose to skimp on primary care do so at their own peril.  But in a time… Read More »

What might be hindering patient portal usage?

By | June 9, 2016

Personally, I find patient portals to be convenient. It’s an easy way to send healthcare-related questions to my provider such as, “does this medication have any side effects?” or, “can you please refill my prescription?”  I perceive the primary benefit as not having to schedule an appointment or wait on hold for 15 minutes to… Read More »