Physicians Taking Back Medicine

What do you do when a hospital decides to replace your independent physician group with a corporate staffing company? For this group of physicians, the answer was simple: fight back. In the fall of 2025, Eugene Emergency Physicians (EEP) learned that after more than 35 years of serving the community, its emergency medicine contract would be awarded to an out-of-state corporate medical group. Recog...

What if the most important thing you do as a physician happens outside the exam room? Free N. Hess, D.O., a board-certified pediatrician and pediatric emergency physician, reached this epiphany early in her career when she realized that many of the children she was treating didn't need to be there at all. "Moving from an inner-city hospital to a rural area opened my eyes to how many injuries and i...

New Mexico has faced its share of health care challenges in recent years, but perhaps none has been more urgent than the loss of physicians, many of whom cite the state’s extreme malpractice climate as a major reason for leaving.  “Between 2017 and 2024, between 200 and 300 physicians left the state as a net negative,” says Aaron Snyder, M.D. , a board-certified emergency physician practicing in A...

Physicians don’t show up to legislative hearings expecting applause. In fact, most arrive knowing the vote may already be decided. They come anyway — on their own time, at their own expense, often canceling clinics or trading call shifts — because patient safety is worth two or three minutes at a microphone. What they don’t expect is to be personally attacked for telling the truth. Yet that is exa...

“Please stand, raise your right hand, and repeat after me: I pledge not to use the word provider when referring to physicians and further, to encourage my colleagues to do so. You may be seated. ” So began rheumatologist Dr. Robert McLean’s inaugural address as 2019 President of the American College of Physicians — and with it, his mission to eliminate the “P-word,” provider , as a term for physic...

A newly published study in the Annals of Internal Medicine has added more fuel to the growing alarm over private equity’s expanding role in American health care. Researchers found that hospitals acquired by private equity (PE) companies experience a decrease in staffing and salaries, as well as an increase in emergency department patient deaths and patient transfers to other hospitals. This isn’t...

When patients walk through the doors of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma , they often bring stories of frustration, fear, and financial devastation from their encounters with America’s health care system. Yet, what they find in Oklahoma City is radically different: a transparent, patient-centered surgical experience at a fraction of the cost of most hospitals and surgery centers. At the heart of thi...

Fifteen years ago, family physician Lee Gross, MD, was running a small private practice in southwest Florida and struggling to stay afloat. Reimbursements were declining, administrative costs were rising, and Medicare requirements grew more burdensome each year. The turning point came when a small business owner approached him with an unusual proposal: since all the employees already saw Gross as...

“They need to just suck it up, buttercup.” That’s what an insurance executive told physicians who asked why the system was burning them out. For many physicians, that attitude is the last straw. Music Credits Medical Education by Art Media - stock.adobe.com Editor's note: Episode timestamps and transcript produced using AI tools. Introduction and Dr. Wilbur’s Background (00:00:15) Dr. Wilbur share...

In this episode, host Dr. Rebekah Bernard explores whether maintenance-of-certification (MOC) requirements are quietly worsening the U.S. physician shortage. Retired rheumatologist Dr. Mark Lopatin recounts how escalating ABIM recertification demands—and their costs—pushed him to leave clinical medicine early. Neurologist Dr. Paul Mathew then explains how similar frustrations led him to help launc...

Mona Masood, DO and Nicole Washington, MD are psychiatrists who have long focused on physician wellness, founding resources to destigmatize and improve physician mental health. In 2020, Masood developed the Physician Support Line , a peer-to-peer network of volunteer psychiatrists offering free and confidential support to medical students and physicians. The line is available from 8 AM to midnight...

Consider this scenario: You are having a medical emergency. An ambulance takes you to the nearest emergency department, where you are met by a nurse practitioner (NP) or physician assistant (PA), who may or may not have extra training in emergency care. You ask for a physician, but there are none in the department, or even in the hospital.  In fact, there isn’t even a physician available by teleph...