Dr. Ken’s Corner

On its current path, the nation’s rural physician workforce will decline by nearly 25% in ten years. According to the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), there are currently 12 physicians per 10,000 rural residents. However, this number is projected […]

It’s not the doctor’s fault blame the system! That’s the underlying message in the landmark report released October 23, 2019 by the prestigious National Academy of Medicine. “You can’t just teach doctors meditation, yoga, and self-care. We need big, fundamental […]

Surgeons are finding that they can prescribe fewer pain-killing opioids after surgical procedures and still achieve effective pain relief. “In the months after new guidelines went into place [in Michigan], the number of opioid pills being prescribed to surgery patients […]

More than 40 percent of inpatient operations and 33 percent of outpatient procedures are performed on older adults each year in the United States. And that number is expected to mushroom as the boomer population ages (per a July 2019 […]

When work hours for residents in training were capped at 80 hours per week, two questions came up: Will residents have enough time to learn everything they need to know? Will the residents’ future patients suffer as a consequence? A […]

Only two countries worldwide allow direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs: The United States and New Zealand. Over 20 years (1997 to 2016) DTC prescription drug advertising in the U.S. increased from $1.3 billion to $6 billion “with a shift […]

espite rural-to-urban migration trends, millions of Americans still live in rural communities. Census figures show that they make up 25% of the nation’s total population; yet fewer than 10% of U.S. physicians practice in rural communities, according to the National […]