Alisa Berger

2 months ago | kevinmd.com | Alisa Berger |Cindy Thompson |G. Richard Olds |Ken Terry

When I was a general surgery intern, I was doing my very early morning pre-rounds on a frail female patient in her late 70s with significant cardio- and peripheral vascular disease. She’d been in the hospital for weeks and wasted away to no more than 85-90 pounds. She was not able to get out of bed unassisted. I don’t even remember why she was in the hospital, but what I remember vividly is walking in that morning to find her dead. Wait—was she? She was not breathing, and she didn’t have a pulse.

Oct 6, 2024 | kevinmd.com | Alisa Berger |G. Richard Olds |Jen Baker-Porazinski |Peggy A. Rothbaum

I recently wrote an article about the problems with our broken health care system, ending with a call for doctors to help develop solutions. In follow-up, here are some possible solutions to consider before the system self-implodes. There is concern that, without any changes, Medicare will run out of funding by 2031. Here are a few things that I think could help. Address physician burnoutIt’s real, and COVID-19 made it worse. Burnout among doctors is higher than in any other U.S. occupation studied.

May 25, 2024 | kevinmd.com | Alisa Berger |G. Richard Olds |Wendy Hind |Leslie Gregory

America’s health care system, much like Congress, is broken, and doctors have to be part of the solution. I don’t know a single doctor who doesn’t wish to improve our ability to increase access and the delivery of health services to our patients. Maintaining and/or improving the health of patients is our goal. That should be the goal of anyone associated with the health care system, but it’s not. Currently, our system is infiltrated and plagued by profit. There’s no quick fix or panacea.