DR. PATRICIA A. FARRELL

Machines will replace eighty percent of all doctors in the healthcare system of the future. The startling statement in the article in 2012 by one of the premier thinkers and entrepreneurs in the computer field, Vinod Khosla, set the readers back on their heels. Physicians’ career choices were now in jeopardy and all those years working toward it were for naught? No physicians, just machines? Forging ahead in his argument, Khosla proposed that the “best solution (is) to get ri

All of us have to go for medical procedures whether it's an annual physical, an eye exam or something more serious and/or invasive. Often, what we're confronted with is an office iPad, a clipboard of forms and ballpoint pens that everyone who's come into the office before they ran out of ink has used. Talk about infection control? Forget it and bring your own pen to the appointment. Try to forget that the rug needs cleaning or that the receptionist has all the enthusiasm of s

Physicians graduating from medical school take The Hippocratic Oath where they agree to “first do no harm,” but what is “harm” and does the oath stand for anything in a world filled with avarice? A simple perusal of the headlines or a Google search will disabuse you of any naïve beliefs you have in regard to how the oath is viewed in the profession. Many aspects of the “first do no harm” can be explored and I couldn’t possibly do an extended discourse on it, but I’ll scratch

As a child, I knew our family physician as a kindly guy who came to the house with his small medical bag, checked my temperature, wrote a script and left. You didn't have to go to his office, he came to you. Times have changed in many things and in medicine it has been a huge change, but one thing is coming back; docs are making house calls. Of course, it's not your friendly doc you've known for years, but a new doc each time because they work for a service that makes house c

Not too long ago, and possibly still to some extent, it was considered unethical for physicians to sell medications from their offices. The belief is/was that such transactions would spur treatment in the service of sales, but that may have been happening all along. Next time you go to your dermatologist or dentist or ophthalmologist, take a look around for brochures and advertisements for products with the practitioner's name on them. You may find that dermatologists have al