What I'm Reading + Inside Medicine Week In Review (February 18, 2023).

Reading recs, quick catch-up, and my appreciation to you!

I figured out that some of my most devoted readers haven’t been opening the “Week In Review” features on Saturday because—well, they’re my most devoted readers for a reason. They read Inside Medicine each and every day, so many of them figured there was nothing new within.

But wait! This weekly feature also has 3-4 recommendations of great articles I’ve read in the last week in other publications which taught me something important, made me think deeply about something in a new way, covered something I would have liked to have written about (but have not yet had time), or I just thought you’d enjoy or find interesting.

So, I’m rebranding “Week In Review + What I’m Reading” into “What I’m Reading + Week In Review.” Same content, inverted priorities.

What I’m Reading:

These are items written elsewhere that I found important and interesting (note: some may be paywalled or require free registration):

• The surprising reason why you aren’t guaranteed to see a doctor when you go to the ER. (Brett Kelman and Blake Farmer, Kaiser Health News, CNN.com).

  Commentary: Several people sent me this story. Doctors I know sent it to me with one subtext: “See? The Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners are coming for our jobs!” Physician Assistants I have worked with sent to me with the opposite context": “See? Everyone blames us for problems we didn’t create and just because we are competent clinicians does not mean we are coming for your jobs!” I’m not going settle this debate here. I will say that if it were not for PAs, I could not possibly see as many patients as I do each shift. On the other hand, there are many situations in which a physician has the unique skillset that is needed, and you can’t always predict when that is going to be and in what ways. Symbiosis should be the goal, not a turf war.

• Medicare Advantage Ads in Your Patient Portal? CMS Says They Shouldn't Be There. (Cheryl Clark, Medpage Today).

  Commentary: When you open your online portal to your medical records, you’re not expecting spam in your inbox, right? Well, apparently that is happening. The government says this should not be happening. But the fine print may actually have some creepy carveouts. Shining a light on this problem is a good start. This story is effin’ amazing. Honestly, just go and read it. It’s not only maddening, but it’s just really great journalism.

• Bills would ban vaccine mandates, mRNA vaccines in ND. (Joel Crane, Valley Live News, Fargo, North Dakota).

  Commentary: Look, I think vaccine mandates can be important for a number of different reasons, depending on the situation. Right now, that’s not the topic I’m so interested in. What is batshit is the notion of banning mRNA vaccines altogether, and making it a crime for clinicians to administer them. What on Earth?! The one thing that the Trump Administration did was Operation Warp Speed, which landed us mRNA vaccines in under a year which have saved millions of lives. Laws like these boggle the mind.

• She Helped Unlock the Science of the Covid Vaccine. (Debra Kamin, The New York Times). To balance out the news from North Dakota, read this palette cleanser about Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett. Dr. Corbett is responsible for the mRNA vaccines’ speedy final steps. When the genome of SARS-CoV-2 was made available to scientists in January 2020, Dr. Corbett knew which sequence we’d need to swap in to existing mRNA vaccine backbones. She and her team went and did that in a matter of hours…and the rest is history.

Tweet of the week:

(Yes, I’m still on Twitter, so you don’t have to be):

Even though Dr. Corbett (see above) is now at Harvard, I’ve never met her or even had the chance to interact with her. But last week, I tweeted “at” her, because I noticed in the New York Times profile that she was using what looked to be a “reMarkable” tablet (you really have to squint to see it in the photograph). I just got one of these tablets myself. It’s like having an electronic piece of paper or notepad. Yes, iPad can do this, but the reMarkable feels a lot more like a real notepad. Anyway, I saw a “fellow traveller” and asked Dr. Corbett if I had spotted her using a reMarkable. Indeed I had!

KizzyPhD @KizzyPhD

@jeremyfaust @remarkablepaper Absolutely!!! I literally am the @remarkablepaper spokesperson with zero commission. Me and my fiancé swear by it. Also, my bff @isadwatson. And like 4 other ppl I’ve gifted it to. 😂

Anyway, I’ve been wanting to interview her for Inside Medicine for a long time. Maybe now I have an in!

Inside Medicine Week In Review:

This is meant to be a convenient way to find what we've covered this week (in case you missed anything or never got around to reading something you’d flagged). Here’s this week’s Inside Medicine entries. Please “like” and share them!

• Monday: Health insurance coverage and cost barriers by race and ethnicity in the US.

• Tuesday: Healthcare Valentines written by OpenAI and me.

• Wednesday: Voices: Dr. Reuben Strayer on a paradigm shift for treating alcohol use disorder patients in ERs.

• Thursday: RSV vaccine succeeds in phase 3 trial of adults ages 60 and older.

• Friday: From symptom to diagnosis: Bruce Willis has an untreatable disease called FTD.

My weekly appreciation to you…

Thanks for liking and sharing the newsletter every day! That helps the content here gain further reach. And, as always, a special thanks to the upgraded subscribers who make such great comments. Increasingly, that’s the pulse of this newsletter, and I hope to see the community continue to grow so that the conversations can be even more robust.

Also, let me know if you have topics you’d like me to cover.

Have a great Saturday!