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Admit or treat them on an outpatient basis? Too often it is the health plan that makes the decision, leaving the medical team and patient to bear the burden.

MedPage Today has published a rebuttal to an article published in The Washington Post newspaper where a pair of economists criticize physicians and the expense of medical care in the US. The rebuttal takes issue with the assertion that doctors are “muggers” and co-conspirators in “taking money away from the rest of us,” as well as the ways in which healthcare costs are quantified in The Washington Post article. The author of the rebuttal stresses that there is a lack of respect towards physicians today that is driving many people from medicine.

Is there a link between climate change and poverty? Does hate affect the risk for chronic health conditions? Is telehealth the model for medicine’s future? Or will something much more ancient be reestablished? How will the Millennial worldview affect how medicine is practiced? This archive of top physician TED talks is worth your while.

For patients being prescribed isotretinoin, there used to be three risk categories: women of reproductive potential, women not of reproductive potential, and males. The new risk classifications are two: those who can become pregnant and those who cannot. This change was based on stakeholder feedback that gender-specific language can be a barrier to access for patients who do not identify with the previous gender-specific patient categories.

The Journal of Clinical Oncology has a heartfelt account of one family’s struggle to access medical records after the death of a child from a brain tumor. Closing down online access to medical records is a common practice at hospitals and healthcare clinics following the death of a patient, often to the pain of family members who still have questions and seek answers.