- Almost every study finds that paper bags are worse than plastic bags for the environment.
- British NHS update: The NHS is unable to perform 1.5m operations a year because of a drastic shortage of anesthetists, a report reveals. Over 8 million people—more than one-tenth of the United Kingdom’s population—are on waiting lists to receive health care.
- If you are traveling in Europe with a pet, your pet needs a passport.
- From 2018 to 2023, the number of direct primary care and concierge practice sites grew by 83.1 percent and the number of clinicians participating in them by 78.4 percent.
- Tele-ICU: when doctors were supposed to be monitoring remotely, one patient died.
- Sugar is necessary for life, but scientists don’t know how it got here.
Category: Direct Primary Care
AI Scribes of Patient Visits May Change Physicians’ Clinical Reasoning
Nowadays programs called A.I. scribe record patient encounters in the background and passively create a concise record of the patient visit. All the doctor has to do is proofread the account and correct any errors. Past research has found that about one-third of transcriptions have some type of errors, which is to be expected when patients mumble, and their thoughts are not well organized. Dr. Ouyang describes initial feelings of relief about not having to sit down and attempt to recall everything that was said. She describes the reduction in stress to have a report that just requires proofing. Perhaps an AI scribe would alleviate the need for doctors to have their face buried in a laptop while discussing conditions with their patients.
What Americans Died from in 1776 is Dramatically Different from Today
The diseases and conditions that Americans died from in 1776 is much different than today. In the past 250 years life expectancy has more than doubled. A baby born in 1776 could expect to live approximately 30 years or more, compared to nearly 80 today. However, these types of comparisons are misleading.
Wednesday Links – 24 June 2026
- Opioid pain contracts turn doctors into parole officers.
- California has affirmative action for gays.
- What Alan Greenspan did for us.
- Latin America swings to the right.
- Congress can save $350 billion over the next decade by restricting states’ use of Medicaid financing gimmicks.
- Another scheme: States Exploit Intergovernmental Transfers to Shift Medicaid Costs to Federal Taxpayers.