Better Health: Smart Health Commentary Better Health (TM): smart health commentary

Latest Posts

Too Old To Be Practicing Medicine?

With apologies to the Beatles:

“When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now,
Will you see need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m ninety four?”

From the New York Post:

Former NYPD chief cardiologist Dr. Irving Kroop retired in 1986 — when he was 70 — with a $64,364 disability pension awarded because of a bad heart, according to sources and city records.

All the while, he’s maintained a private practice in Brooklyn and moonlighted at NYCERS, the New York City Employees Retirement System, which paid him $14,479 last year to help determine whether other city workers should get disability pensions.

“Hats off to the man — he’s 94 years old but disabled? And still going strong?” said an incredulous Carol Kellerman, head of the Citizens Budget Commission.

Kroop, who gets $155 an hour as a private contractor for city’s civilian pension board, shuffles into examining rooms with a cane and oxygen tank, sources say.

This story presents an interesting dilemma in this era of shrinking retirement income for our seniors who want to continue to work. Should there be an age limit for practicing doctors? How do we assess if a doctor is “disabled” as they age? Should we care? Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

Read more »

How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

Read more »

See all interviews »

Latest Cartoon

See all cartoons »

Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

Read more »

The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

Read more »

Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

Read more »

See all book reviews »

Commented - Most Popular Articles