“I had a patient just this week who, as I was about to give her intravenous sedation, said, ‘Isn’t this illegal? Didn’t they stop abortions?’” Forty-nine years passed between Roe v. Wade, a Supreme Court case that upheld...
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Every May, Skin Cancer Awareness Month reminds us that the sun can be both life-giving and life-threatening. But here in Arizona, where there are over 300 sunny days each year1, policies have fallen short of protecting our most...
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Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) represent over 266 million Americans as third party administrators managing the selection, purchase and distribution of pharmaceuticals on behalf of health insurers, union health plans and government purchasers. Functioning as brokers between drug payers,...
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About one-quarter of U.S. adults report delaying filling prescription medications, skipping doses, or cutting pills due to cost according to Kaiser Family Foundation’s 2022 Health Care Debt Survey. A convoluted web of factors drives high prescription drug prices...
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Driving through West Hollywood, Los Angeles cannot help but notice the sheer number of medical spas plastered on almost every block. The glistening-white minimalist interiors, elegant cursive storefront signs, and posters of picture-perfect models receiving Botox injections captures...
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Some commonly expressed sentiments I’ve heard amongst my colleagues since beginning my medical training is, “the older generation sold out and left us,” or “big firms all own medicine now, this is a terrible time to be entering.”...
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To date, there have been over 370 million recorded cases of COVID-19 worldwide, with over 5.6 million deaths. The United States alone has had over 74 million recorded cases of COVID-19, and over 880,000 deaths [1]. As the...
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In late April Governor Dough Ducey signed Senate Bill (SB) 1457, an expansive anti-abortion bill with a plethora of mandates impacting both patients and medical professionals. The bill opens by guaranteeing civil rights for fetuses at any stage...
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There are a number of inevitabilities in life. Death, billionaires avoiding taxes, and people asking med students what specialty they want to go into. As someone who entered med school with the singular goal of emergency medicine (as...
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Physicians hold a high degree of responsibility within their profession by nature – caring for patients is not easy. A significant amount of training is required to become a well-rounded physician, and with that rigorous process comes a...
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By the end of the 2020 calendar year, the outstanding student loan debt for Americans totaled over $1.7 trillion. [1] Roughly 45 million (one in every eight) Americans have student loan debt, making student loan debt the second...
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Chances are that if you have spent any time performing clinical research you have encountered the Institutional Review Board, or IRB. The IRB is the gateway to clinical research, and determines if the project upholds the rights of...
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Tobacco kills 1,300 people. Every. Single. Day. Not if I can help it. Despite increased research, education and outreach, tobacco is still the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. As a future healthcare provider, I...
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On October 26th, Judge, now Justice, Amy Coney Barrett of the 7th Circuit Court was confirmed by the U.S. Senate, filling the vacancy left by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. This has primed the highest judicial body in the...
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COVID-19 has left brutal impacts on the US healthcare system and economy, as well as many other fronts. As of this month in the US, there are approximately 3 million confirmed cases with a total death count of...
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Over the last few months, the COVID-19 pandemic has directed local, national, and global policies. While it has unveiled the strengths and weaknesses of our current systems, it has not shown us that a single, unilateral approach to...
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An increasing number of patients over recent years have noted appointments at a doctor’s office feel rushed or have been in an emergency department or clinic feeling as though they were just another number on the list to...
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Workplace assault is not something many healthcare workers anticipated when they initially signed up for the job, and nor should it be. According to the American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC), 75% of 25,000 workplace assault cases occur...
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Healthcare economics and health-related spending in the United States has been a significant topic of debate for years, and concerns for solutions are only increasing. In the vast array of analysis over costs, there appears to be an...
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With the wide array of territories the tech and corporate industries seem to span over, healthcare appears to be their latest frontier of interest. This year, annual family premiums for employer health coverage have risen by over 5%,...
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Last year, Amazon became the second publicly traded American company (following Apple) to hit over $1 trillion dollars in value[1]. According to the New York Times, for every dollar spent on e-commerce in the U.S., Amazon racks in...
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Mass casualty incidents (MCIs) such as shootings, infrastructure collapses, or bombings can quickly overwhelm emergency medical resources with gravely injured victims. This has highlighted the importance of training the public in basic medicine so that bystanders can provide...
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CMS is proposing a controversial change to Medicare reimbursements beginning in 2019, known as the site-neutral payment policy. Under the policy, Medicare would reimburse outpatient services at the same rate as inpatient services. Currently, providers are reimbursed at...
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After Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in the fall of 2017, one of the many ensuing scandals was its disablement of several pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities. It was widely reported that intravenous fluids were becoming a scarcity across hospitals...
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One of the things I most love about medicine is the multitude of choices we have to create our careers. Primary care or specialty medicine? Academia or private practice? Urban or rural communities? The choices can feel overwhelming,...
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The World Economic Forum, held annually in Davos, Switzerland, has become a platform where politicians, scientists, economists, and other global influencers gather to discuss the future of global development. During the most recent convening, the Access to Medicines...
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In December 2017, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that it is lifting a moratorium on funding for gain-of-function research on influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) viruses. This policy dated...
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Virtual medical care has been gaining traction, and now, a recent change to the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) just gave it another boost. The Center of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released its final rule...
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The Indian Health Services (IHS) was created in the 1950s with the aim of ensuring that comprehensive and culturally acceptable personal and public health services are available and accessible to Native American people. Since the installment of IHS,...
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When the Affordable Care Act was created, it included a provision referred to as “cost-sharing reductions” for households that had an annual income 100-250% the federal poverty level (e.g., $24,600 to $61.500 for a family of four). The...
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Last week, Florida joined a growing list of states passing legislation that recognizes a novel approach to healthcare: direct primary care (DPC). What is DPC? In short, it is primary care where patients pay a monthly fee to...
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After completing four grueling years of medical education, a select cohort of highly talented individuals attain the honor of calling themselves doctors. However, their training is far from complete as their residency will require another three to seven...
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Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the healthcare industry has seen a flurry of changes ranging from mandated health insurance to the use of electronic recordkeeping. Most recently, MACRA has hospitals scrambling to become compliant with...
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Arizona is entering its hottest season of the year: not summer, but rather election season. The Arizona Medical Association (ArMA) recently issued its endorsements for the August 30th primary elections but they decided not to weigh in on...
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With the Medicare Access and Chip Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) about to take effect next January, only half of US physicians report being familiar with the impending legislation [1]. While some are aware that the traditional fee-for-service...
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NIH_Clinical_Research_Center_aerial In today’s political climate, discord is common and accords drastically less so. But in an increasingly rare show of bipartisanship, the National Institute of Health (NIH) has recently received a $2 billion increase in federal funding [1]....
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Since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law and efforts have gone underway to reduce healthcare spending (currently 18% of the GDP), two of the most popular acronyms have been ACO and PCMH. Unlike previous models of...
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“From the 1870s until the 1970s, it was widely assumed in the United States that mentally ill individuals did not belong in prisons and jails but rather in mental hospitals, where they could receive asylum and treatment” [1]....
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WHAT IT MEANS FOR STUDENTS AT UA COM-P Imagine that it’s the spring of 2020. Yes, you and your class have successfully graduated from the College of Medicine and are in the midst of enjoying your residency. It’s...
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I remember the moment when I first decided that I wanted to be a physician. I was five, and I was walking out of a store with my family in rural upstate New York. Obsessed with dinosaurs at...
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