Doctors’ ability to see inside their patients with lab and imaging tests is one of the miracles of modern medicine. Without tests, we’re just guessing!  But the unsaid truth is that doctors overtest patients, and that may be doing more harm than good to patients, doctors, and the entire health care system. In this episode, we sit down with cardiologist Dr. Jeff Sobel to understand the forces behind overtesting and how he is taking on the problem in his system.

Show Notes:

1. Overuse of diagnostic testing in healthcare: a systematic review 
2. The Landscape of Inappropriate Laboratory Testing: A 15-Year Meta-Analysis
3. Why Doctors Test Too Much
4. Projected Lifetime Cancer Risks from Current Computed Tomography Imaging
5. Getting to “No” 

Nothing says 'quality care' like showing a stranger your throat via a grainy webcam while your cat walks across the keyboard.

Telehealth — or medical care without the doctor and patient being in the same room — has exploded, partly enhanced by the COVID pandemic. Some say that this is the beginning of a new paradigm in medical care. For others, the experience feels more like putting more technology between them and their doctor. When you need to talk to your doctor, should you email them? Schedule a visit? Meet with them on video?

We chat with Dr. Matt Sakumoto, a virtual care veteran, to answer those questions and more, as we uncover both the brilliant and stupid truth of telehealth.

Show Notes:

The Lancet on the Telephone (1977)

If a Primary Care physician is the quarterback of our healthcare system…OUCH!…they’re getting sacked time and time again by some burly bureaucratic linebackers.

Primary care medicine is meant to be the foundation for a high-functioning health system. Yet why do so many primary care physicians and their patients experience angst and disappointment with that system? In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Eugene Lee, a primary care physician who has practiced in several systems, to understand the gap between the promise and reality of primary care and what doctors and patients can do to make it better.

In this short trailer, pediatrician Rahul Parikh and radiologist Jonathan Mates introduce Healthcare is Stupid.

We’ll explore the absurdities of American healthcare—how we got here, the incentives and structures that quietly shape it, and what practical, incremental improvements might actually move things in a better direction.

If you work in healthcare, depend on it, or simply wonder why so much of it feels unnecessarily complicated, this podcast is for you.