The recess appointment of Don Berwick to lead CMS can be seen as a cynical act of political opportunism, sidestepping the Congressional approval process using a tactic worthy of Machiavelli, or Karl Rove. Or it can be viewed as a pragmatic decision by Obama to avoid a lengthy and exasperating re-litigation of the healthcare reform debate. Death ...

After serving on the board of the American Board of Internal Medicine for the past few years, I’ve come to truly appreciate the value of board certification in demonstrating – and enhancing – our competence and commitment to professionalism. But not all boards are created equal: the ABIM, like all the members of the American Board of Medical ...

This is an amazing tale of leadership – by my hospital CEO, our former chancellor, and, most importantly, a remarkable philanthropist. I’ll start with the latter, veer off to describe the former two, and then return, on this special day, to the philanthropist. The first time I met Marc Benioff – in 2007 – he was not a happy guy. A adult relative ...

It’s that time again – here’s the brochure and course information for the Management of the Hospitalized Patient (MHP) conference, October 14-16 at the Fairmont Hotel in beautiful, fog-free (at least in October) San Francisco. This will be our 14th annual hospital medicine conference; the first, attended by about 100 hardy hospitalist pioneers ...

As a member of the executive committee of the American Board of Internal Medicine, I can’t provide too much of the inside scoop, so I’ll mainly point you to the published descriptions of a remarkable case: that of one Dr. Arora, who ran an ABIM board review course with a difference. The difference was that attendees of the Arora Board Review ...

This past Monday was a sad night for me: no “24” on Fox, and no more installments in the works until the (inevitably disappointing) movie comes out. Watching Jack Bauer's derring-do with my sons has been one of my can’t-miss-it rituals for nearly a decade. I’m well aware that this cannot have been healthy, or moral, but it was exciting and, at ...

You probably saw yesterday’s hospitalist piece in the New York Times, arguably the best lay article on the movement to date. It hit all the right notes, and did so with uncommon grace and fairness. The piece, written by the Times’ Jane Gross, profiled Dr. Subha Airan-Javia, a young hospitalist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. ...

Paul Levy, the blogging CEO of Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, found himself in hot water last month over an inappropriate relationship with a female subordinate. While some of the details of the transgression remain sketchy, I think I now know enough to opine on it. To my mind, Paul has been an extraordinary healthcare leader, and ...

A couple of months ago, a Baltimore reporter called to get my take on a scandal at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Towson, an upscale suburb. A rainmaker cardiologist there, Dr. Mark Midei, had been accused of placing more than 500 stents in patients who didn’t need them, justifying the procedures by purposely misreading cath films. In several of the ...

If you’ve ever been on a diet, you know that it really helps to keep a food log. Seeing your consumption chronicled in one place is illuminating – and often explains why those love handles aren’t melting away despite two hours on the treadmill each week. In today’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, internist Rich Baron ...