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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Two years ago, I wrote about the case of Julie Thao, the Wisconsin nurse sent to prison for a medication error. I argued then that – although Julie bypassed some safety rules – she most certainly did not deserve jail time. Along comes another case involving jail time for a medical mistake, this one featuring an Ohio pharmacist named Eric Cropp. I ...

Sticking with my recent hand hygiene theme, an interesting study came out last week demonstrating that outpatients were willing to help audit their providers’ hand hygiene practices. The patients felt that snooping on their docs didn’t poison the physician-patient relationship. Moreover, their observations were accurate and the program was dirt ...

In this week’s New England Journal, Peter Pronovost and I make the case for striking a new balance between “no blame” and accountability. Come on folks, it’s time. At most hospitals, hand hygiene rates hover between 30-70%, and it’s a near-miracle when they top 80%. When I ask people how they’re working to improve their rates, the invariable ...

It’s time to fight back. The “death panel” nonsense is not a harmless and amusing political canard – it is modern McCarthyism: the shameless, heinous use of lies and distortions to scare and confuse people. The tide will only turn if all of us begin speaking up for the truth. Read this morning’s NY Times piece on palliative care, and you get a ...

I’m just back from the ABIM Foundation’s Summer Forum in New Mexico, increasingly a who’s who of the health policy world, our Davos. I came away from the meeting with a new framework for thinking about the sticky issue of physician payment reform – specifically, how to balance the fact that we docs are ethically spring-loaded to do everything we ...

I just finished reading Atul Gawande’s June 1st New Yorker piece – it's the Talk of the Health Policy Town – on healthcare’s “Cost Conundrum.” Like most of Atul’s work, the article is lyrical, powerful, insightful, and correct. As you’ve probably heard, Gawande profiles the town of McAllen, Texas, whose healthcare costs are nearly double the ...