My husband was dying. I was being ignored.

--------------------------------------------------------------- Here are the stories you missed on KevinMD. Thank you for your continuing readership. --------------------------------------------------------------- Sponsors [6 strategic advantages of hospital contact center consolidation](. Find out why unifying your infrastructure can streamline processes and deliver better customer service. [Read the eBrief now](. Health care delivery continues to undergo unprecedented change -- how are you affected by burnout, EHR issues, and the changing practice models? Share your thoughts in [the new Future of Healthcare Survey](. For every 100 appointments, [seven won’t show](. With a $20 co-pay and average reimbursement of $90, your practice is losing as much as $41,000/year. Tired of calling patients to remind them about appointments? [Get that time and money back now](. What hospital CIOs are prioritizing for 2018: [View infographic](. [Patient misidentification can lead to medical errors, patient harm, and costly inefficiencies]( for providers. Get the facts on patient misidentification, and [learn how to avoid it]( from organizations that use biometrics to do so. --------------------------------------------------------------- KevinMD Plus: Jan. 29, 2018 [My husband was dying. I was being ignored.]( It was a long December. A few years ago, my husband of 37 years got his death sentence: recurrence of liver cancer with mets to his lungs and lymph nodes. He had a “Whipple” — a surgical procedure for pancreatic cancer — on Dec 24, 2015, and the surgeon discovered liver cancer too. So it […] [Studying to be a doctor, while living as a patient]( Walking up to the admissions desk I knew the routine. I stretched out my arm for my hospital band. A name, a number, and a doctor were what defined me during my many hospital stays. It was simple; my brain was too large for my skull. Brain surgery after brain surgery has occupied my life […] [The simple thing patients can do to help doctors run on time]( It happens all too often. I am done with a visit and wrapping things up. Sometimes my hand is even on the doorknob to leave the room. Then the patient says it. “Oh, by the way, doctor …” This is inevitably followed by some symptom they have that is serious and needs further attention. The […] [Being a doctor isn’t glamorous. But this physician keeps coming back for more.]( My last clinic patient of the day was a frail, elderly man. I initially found him to be ornery. He had the air of someone who was chronically irritated. He was also incredibly hard of hearing. Due to the awkward set up of the exam room and computer, his wheelchair was positioned in such a […] [Why hospital mergers are destined to fail]( In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy said, “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.” It was a clarion call, a full-throated warning against national complacency in an era of great prosperity. It was during this same period that community hospitals stood as the dominant force in American health […] --------------------------------------------------------------- [Fire Your Financial Advisor! The White Coat Investor Online Course.]( A step by step guide to creating your own financial plan. [Enroll now. Risk-free](. --------------------------------------------------------------- [10 steps to keep physicians sane]( These are tumultuous times for practicing physicians. The health care landscape is changing at breathtaking pace and less and less of our time is spent doing what we were actually trained to do: taking care of patients. I absolutely love the patient care part of my job, do everything possible to always remember why I […] [How to avoid #MeToo in medicine]( Let me say first that any woman who has ever been harassed or assaulted should never be made to feel that it is her fault. It is always the perpetrator’s fault. Men can be boors, or worse, and testosterone can be toxic. I went to Princeton University at a time when the ratio of men […] [The Tesla and a failure of stealth wealth]( I loved my Prius. I’m not a car guy. I’m really not. But when my Prius started to fail after 120K miles, I took an active interest in picking my new mode of transportation. I had a few caveats. I was driving 100 miles a day. I wanted either a hybrid or fully electric car. […] [A physicians care for patients in jail and wonders: Could it have been prevented?]( Some of the people under my care in the jail right now are quite ill. (This statement is always true, but it seems that the intensity of illness is greater now than usual.) As a result, the perennial question seems more urgent now: Is there any way to prevent All of This? For some of […] [A physician mother to her sons]( Dear Boys, I am so blessed to be your mom. You each have amazing personalities, unique talents, and special characteristics. I know someday you will grow up and be strong men. Kind men. Respectful men. Successful men. Men like your grandfathers. Men like your father. Someday when you go out into the world, you will […] [Scenes from a medical student’s rotation in psychiatry]( My classmate and I were walking back to the residents’ workroom when we realized one of the psychiatry patients was trailing along behind us. I glanced over my shoulder and found a very short gentleman in a patient gown walking just a little too close to me. “Serena,” he said, smiling at me. I looked […] [What exactly does an emergency physician do?]( I am an emergency medicine physician. I save lives. As an ER physician, my job is frequently misunderstood. A common question that patients ask is, “What specialty are you hoping to go into?” The misconception is that emergency rooms are staffed by cardiologists, internists, etc., who are trying to make extra income. That’s likely not […] [How this doctor eliminated $500,000 in debt]( In my last post, I told my story of how I got out of medical school with only $18,000 of debt. By the time I left residency, I had that whittled down to $6,000 at 3% interest. Then during the next three years after starting my practice, I had accumulated almost $500,000 of new debt. […] [When a breast cancer surgeon gets breast cancer: being on the other side of the scalpel]( Six weeks ago, I was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. As a breast cancer and breast plastic surgeon, I see women all the time who are in the exact same place I’ve been since receiving the phone call from the pathologist. Shocked and terrified by the news, overwhelmed by what this is going to mean […] [What Celine Dion can teach us about patient care]( During a recent Las Vegas performance, an intoxicated concertgoer got on the stage and stood next to singer Celine Dion. This situation could have been handled in multiple ways, but Ms. Dion never lost her composure and handled the situation with grace and kindness. She brilliantly was able to diffuse the situation without anger while […] [The truth behind that Baltimore patient dumping video]( A young woman stands in the freezing cold outside an urban Baltimore hospital. The woman, covered only by a thin hospital gown, moans incoherently at the man capturing her suffering on cellphone video. As seen on the now-viral video, she’d been left there by security personnel employed by the supposed place of healing just a […] [How to tell seniors they’re too old for cancer screening]( Cancer screening can save lives. Mammographies reduce the chance women will die of breast cancer; and colonoscopies reduce the chance people will die of colon cancer. But should my 93-year-old father receive a screening colonoscopy? The test is uncomfortable, carries risks, and costs money. Even more importantly, my dad probably won’t live long enough to […] [MKSAP: 22-year-old woman with abnormal involuntary movements]( Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 22-year-old woman is evaluated for a 2-year-history of abnormal involuntary movements. She describes these movements as a quick elevation of the left shoulder followed by a rolling movement of the neck from side to side. The patient is able to […] [Is private college and medical school worth it? One physician’s story.]( College I went to a fairly expensive college, George Washington University. I think at the time (1998) it actually was one of the, if not the most expensive schools. Why did I decide to go there? Well, my brother was attending the school and living in Washington, DC seemed amazing to a suburban boy from […] [So the flu shot is only 10 percent effective. Here are 5 reasons to still get it.]( So you heard the flu shot is 10 percent effective. With so many sources of information available, the primary care provider’s role increasingly becomes that of educator. It is important to me that the parents of my patients make informed decisions, so when I have a parent decline the influenza vaccine, I make an effort […] [Pay for performance: Have we gotten what we’ve paid for?]( In a research article published in Annals of Internal Medicine, investigators studied performance in Medicare’s Value-Based Payment Modifier program (VM) — a prominent pay-for-performance (P4P) program that adjusts providers’ Part B payment rates on the basis of their performance on a set of quality and cost measures. The authors were interested in 2 questions: Is engagement in VM […] [This physician bailed on the stock market in 2008. What now?]( Q. Should I get back into the stock market? I am 11 years out of residency and have made many of the mistakes you have listed on the site. The primary one was getting OUT of stocks entirely with the 2008 crash. Oi. Now I have all this cash and some bonds, and I want […] --------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this email because you subscribed to the KevinMD e-newsletter. If a friend sent you this email and you want to subscribe, go to [KevinMD](. --------------------------------------------------------------- 173 Daniel Webster Highway Nashua, New Hampshire 03062 [Unsubscribe]( | [Change Subscriber Options](