Here are the best things I’ve read all week. The pieces are not necessarily news and could be decades old, and they’re probably longform writing but not always. Maybe there is one link, maybe there are forty. But they all were thought-provoking enough that they hopped around in my brain long past the read. Enjoy. [...]

When doctors take patients off of a prescription medicine, it is often for a good reason. But pharmacists don’t always get the memo. A new study finds that more than 1 in 100 discontinued prescriptions were filled by the pharmacy anyway, putting some patients at serious risk. In the U.S., pharmacists filled more than 3.7 [...]

Health care spending increases have slowed over the past couple years. Still, we are spending some $2.6 trillion—that’s trillion with a “T”—a year on health costs, which is a higher percentage of our GDP than any other developed country. And we don’t seem to be getting that much healthier. So economists and policy researchers are [...]

Antibiotics have been a boon to modern pediatric medicine—transforming many previously fatal childhood ailments into mere inconveniences. But these revolutionary treatments are not a cure-all. In fact, many common pediatric illnesses, including many ear and respiratory infections, fail to respond to antibiotics. And over-prescription of these meds—especially broad-spectrum antibiotics—is not only costly; it can also [...]

Take two of these—or should that be three? Or one? Congress recently took steps to improve the safety of children’s drugs. Now, a new study finds that those on the other end of the age spectrum also frequently receive medication that may put their health at risk. Approximately 20 percent of prescriptions that primary care [...]

Medical school might be a long, slow slog, but once doctors have their training, they can often make diagnoses in a matter of moments. New research suggests that doctors actually identify an abnormality in less than two seconds—not much longer than it takes them to name an animal or a letter of the alphabet. Twenty-five [...]

On-the-go doctors can already see your latest MRI or CT scan via a smart phone or tablet. But would you want them to be able to download an app that essentially turns an iPad into an EKG to determine if you are having a heart attack? Earlier this year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration [...]

It’s no secret that many doctors get paid by pharmaceutical companies to talk to other docs—about general conditions, research trends or specific drugs—or to provide expertise for company research. But what has long been undisclosed is the amount of money that these drugmakers were giving physicians for their time. Thanks in part to some high-profile [...]

An intoxicated co-worker in many workplaces might be more of a nuisance than a threat. But an impaired or incompetent physician can present a real risk to patients. The American Medical Association (AMA) asserts that all doctors have an "ethical obligation to report" colleagues who are suspected of being unable to safely fulfill their duties, [...]