The Podcast by KevinMD with host Kevin Pho, MD

A patient says her hip has hurt for a while. Whether she leaves trusting her doctor depends on what happens next. Alan P. Feren, a retired surgeon, health care consultant, and patient advocate, separates active listening, which makes a patient feel heard, from careful listening, which changes the reasoning. This episode is based on his article "Trust in medicine is restored by method, not empathy," published on KevinMD. He says the history alone gets you about seventy-five percent of the diagnosis, and that the step squeezed out of a fifteen-minute visit is the one deciding whether a plan is usable. He talks about patients called non-adherent who cannot afford the medication, cannot reach the appointment, or are working two jobs. He also explains what happens when a patient arrives with a story already shaped by an AI tool, and why the clinician has to stay its author. You will hear the three things he tells busy physicians to establish first, and the questions he tells patients to ask when the answers never come.

This episode is brought to you by ModMed.

Welcome to your new AI-Powered Practice from ModMed. We're transforming specialty care by embedding AI Assistants across your entire workflow. Our all-in-one platform of EHR, patient engagement, practice management, and RCM helps reduce repetitive work while keeping you firmly in control.

Trained on de-identified data from nearly a billion patient encounters, this isn't just smarter software. It's a new way of working for specialty medicine, more efficient and more connected to the patient experience.

Start building your AI-Powered Practice at modmed.com.

VISIT SPONSOR → https://www.modmed.com/

SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST → https://www.kevinmd.com/podcast

A patient came in with weight gain nobody could explain. Every test came back fine. Shiv K. Goel is a board-certified internal medicine and functional medicine physician. This episode is based on his article "How relationships affect health, seen from the exam room," published on KevinMD. He treats the people in a patient's life as part of the same picture as sleep, alcohol, and diet. A difficult supervisor and plain loneliness count as stress the way a marriage does. He is careful to say that a hard relationship does not cause disease. It changes the load the body is carrying, and that load shows up physically. You will hear what he rules out first: thyroid disease, anemia, diabetes, and sleep apnea. You will also hear what a flat cortisol curve tells him about long-running stress, and the questions he asks when nothing turns up. He is not a marriage counselor, and that referral belongs to someone else. He closes with two questions, one for physicians and one for everyone else.

This episode is brought to you by ModMed.

Welcome to your new AI-Powered Practice from ModMed. We're transforming specialty care by embedding AI Assistants across your entire workflow. Our all-in-one platform of EHR, patient engagement, practice management, and RCM helps reduce repetitive work while keeping you firmly in control.

Trained on de-identified data from nearly a billion patient encounters, this isn't just smarter software. It's a new way of working for specialty medicine, more efficient and more connected to the patient experience.

Start building your AI-Powered Practice at modmed.com.

VISIT SPONSOR → https://www.modmed.com/

SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST → https://www.kevinmd.com/podcast

A doctor cracked open an airplane emergency kit and found a sticker saying there was no epinephrine inside. Lianne Mandelbaum, president of No Nut Traveler and airline correspondent for Allergic Living, has spent a decade collecting accounts like it. This episode is based on her article "Epinephrine on airplanes should not depend on the airline," published on KevinMD. You will hear what a proposed federal rule would change, replacing the required medication list with a flexible one and stripping the exemption paperwork that was the only record of which airlines carried nothing. She explains why antihistamines do not belong under an anaphylaxis heading, why one auto-injector is not enough when two passengers react to the same meal, and why nobody knows how often it happens. You will also hear how a food label can look complete, satisfy federal rules, and still omit the allergen. Press play to hear what she is asking people to send the agency before the comment window closes, and the eight cents per at-risk passenger she says the fix would cost.

This episode is brought to you by ModMed.

Welcome to your new AI-Powered Practice from ModMed. We're transforming specialty care by embedding AI Assistants across your entire workflow. Our all-in-one platform of EHR, patient engagement, practice management, and RCM helps reduce repetitive work while keeping you firmly in control.

Trained on de-identified data from nearly a billion patient encounters, this isn't just smarter software. It's a new way of working for specialty medicine, more efficient and more connected to the patient experience.

Start building your AI-Powered Practice at modmed.com.

VISIT SPONSOR → https://www.modmed.com/

SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST → https://www.kevinmd.com/podcast

An eye surgeon who used to see forty patients a day now sees one to three in a morning, and he has no staff. Oren Fass, a board-certified ophthalmologist and cataract surgeon, has been an employed physician, a practice owner, and an owner who sold to private equity, and he now runs a solo micro practice. This episode is based on his article "The hidden variable in the physician burnout debate," published on KevinMD. You will hear how his agents read incoming faxes, start the scheduling, and apply his billing rules, and why he says this was not feasible three years ago. He is direct about why doctors feel stuck, from the six to twelve month timelines on licenses and insurance panels to the second shift of charting that starts at six in the evening. He also argues that ownership and creativity are the two bets worth making now, and that the salaried job may be the riskier one. You will hear where he thinks the model fits, and where it does not.

This episode is brought to you by ModMed.

Welcome to your new AI-Powered Practice from ModMed. We're transforming specialty care by embedding AI Assistants across your entire workflow. Our all-in-one platform of EHR, patient engagement, practice management, and RCM helps reduce repetitive work while keeping you firmly in control.

Trained on de-identified data from nearly a billion patient encounters, this isn't just smarter software. It's a new way of working for specialty medicine, more efficient and more connected to the patient experience.

Start building your AI-Powered Practice at modmed.com.

VISIT SPONSOR → https://www.modmed.com/

SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST → https://www.kevinmd.com/podcast

A surgeon's kids FaceTime him from their iPads while he is in the operating room, and he cannot pick up. Alyssa Kressel, a strategic communications professional, has spent more than fifteen years alongside her husband's surgical training. This episode is based on her article "What the children of physicians carry," published on KevinMD. You will hear why the usual advice about adjusting hours does not fit a transplant schedule, and why she puts the weight on the time he is home. She talks about the doctors' wives and surgeons' wives groups that offered solidarity when nobody had a fix, about the resentment she is still working through, and about the bracelets she braided from old scrubs that grew into a stuffed animal with a pocket for notes. She also says what she wishes his residency had offered the people waiting at home. If you are in a health care family, or you train the people in one, this conversation names what the kids carry and what one family built to help them hold it.

This episode is brought to you by ModMed.

Welcome to your new AI-Powered Practice from ModMed. We're transforming specialty care by embedding AI Assistants across your entire workflow. Our all-in-one platform of EHR, patient engagement, practice management, and RCM helps reduce repetitive work while keeping you firmly in control.

Trained on de-identified data from nearly a billion patient encounters, this isn't just smarter software. It's a new way of working for specialty medicine, more efficient and more connected to the patient experience.

Start building your AI-Powered Practice at modmed.com.

VISIT SPONSOR → https://www.modmed.com/

SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST → https://www.kevinmd.com/podcast