New stuff I’m learning about living dying what matters most - Tue, Mar 19 2019

After spending 15 years researching the best ways to support people whose lives end in hospice, professor Elizabeth Bergman has advice for friends, neighbors, family members and co-workers who want to send them a final, poignant message: Mail…

Jeff Cohn I'm not a fan of sending a greeting card to someone in hospice- unless it includes a written personal message that helps the person dying sense some way their life impacted yours

Last month, Caryn Isaacs went to see her primary care doctor for her annual Medicare wellness visit. A patient advocate who lives in Manhattan, Ms. Isaacs, 68, felt perfectly fine and expected a clean bill of health. But her doctor, who'd ordered a…

Jeff Cohn Bacterial resistance, major toxicities- we need to save these important drugs for when we need them, otherwise when we do need them they're less likely to work well

The pain radiated from the top of Annette Monachelli's head, and it got worse when she changed positions. It didn't feel like her usual migraine. The 47-year-old Vermont attorney turned innkeeper visited her local doctor at the Stowe Family…

Jeff Cohn Staggering expense associated with the implementation of electronic medical records and yet events like reported here are common- plus the negative impact on the lives of clinicians using them

The kind of thing we have done instinctively in our workplaces for two decades — sending a quick email instead of setting up a meeting — has until recently eluded many doctors. Electronic consultations, or eConsults (sometimes called…

Jeff Cohn I think part of the reason that electronic consults (docs communicate about a pt w/o pt seeing the specialist) 'work' is that many cases referred to specialists can be managed well by a PCP, maybe with a little advice/support by a specialist

Suzanne Burke couldn't help but snap the picture after peeking into her boys' bedroom. Her son Tony, 16 and autistic, had been having trouble settling down. So big brother Johnny, a year older, climbed into Tony's twin, threw an arm around his…

Jeff Cohn Great story about brotherly love and the common bond of hoops

In the space of a few short years, the Boston-born, Southern California transplant (born Richard Anthony Monsour) had merged the laid-back, sun-blasted lifestyle of the surf scene with a blistering rhythm of rockabilly and early rock-and-roll. As…

Jeff Cohn This king of surf guitar (think theme from 'Pulp Fiction') was a major influence on Hendrix and Van Halen- and he led a tough life

WASHINGTON — No issue animated the Democrats' 2018 congressional campaigns like health care and the promises to expand access to insurance and to lower costs. But as House Democrats sit down to draft their vision of governance in the coming…

Jeff Cohn And this is because it's a complex problem- and complex problems can only be solved by learning as you go, not by figuring it out in advance...

celebrating on the Nice boardwalk where my once-love once insisted we could make it all the way through a triple-layer chocolate mousse we could not even bear to lick our spoons please tell me these new deaths if I scroll up I will see the same…

Jeff Cohn I came upon this lovely poem this past weekend and wanted to share it

It's finally here. College basketball's version of Christmas morning, only the present gets opened in the evening. From there, it's a three-week sprint to the finish, a 68-team field narrowed to one team snipping nets on April 8 in Minneapolis.

Jeff Cohn I am a fan of the Post's sports section so I'm sharing their NCAA guide-

We call them upsets. But unless you root for the team on the wrong end of one, they are the happiest things on Earth. They should be called overjoyeds. There are two kinds of tournament underdogs. There is the team that makes an unlikely deep run…

Jeff Cohn Rooting for Cinderellas (and having picked them in your NCAA pool) is a big part of what makes 'the tournament' the best sporting event of the year