Author: Dr. Anna Reynolds

By MATT McCORD When most Americans undergo surgery, they expect to recover quickly and return to their normal lives. Few realize that something as routine as a shoulder surgery, a hernia repair, or a mastectomy can mark the beginning of a life-altering opioid addiction. This often-overlooked connection between routine medical care and opioid dependence demands urgent attention. How Physicians and Hospitals Sustain the Opioid Epidemic For decades, the pharmaceutical industry has shaped medical education, ingraining the belief that opioids are the best first-line treatment for acute pain. As a result, American physicians prescribe opioids at dramatically higher rates than their…

The decline in cognitive health, especially that leading to Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases, is one of the most feared conditions by patients and their families. It’s also one of the most expensive. But if we can predict it early there are things we can do to prevent or ameliorate it. The issue has been finding an easy and comprehensive way to monitor it as part of primary care. The team at Linus Health has been building a diagnostic solution for exactly that and claims that it’s now the right time to roll it out as part of general primary…

Lynda Brown-Ganzert is CEO of RxPx. The company is the 2022 merger of the company she founded, Curatio, which was a support system for rare disease patients, with RxMx, a complementary service that helped clinicians manage patients on treatment or clinical trials. Lynda says that somehow I inspired the merger! (Although I don’t remember it, nor did she send me my 10%!). Now the company is supporting rare disease patients, funded primarily by pharma, across the globe. Lynda gives a full demo of both the clinician and patient experience–coordinating meds, labs, imaging, appointments, content, symptoms, patient reported outcomes, peer and…

A friend of mine who wants to stay anonymous (for now at any rate) had a crazy waste of time proving that he was eligibile for a medication on his plan. I thought his story might trigger a few of you! And yes Optum is of course part of United HealthGroup–Matthew Holt Here is the ridiculous situation I had with filling a prescription through COBRA a few weeks back. I spent 33 minutes on the phone on January 8th, 2025 before I finally navigated the maze that is American healthcare to the extent that a medication that has been prescribed…

By MATTHEW HOLT DOGE, or Doggie as Kara Swisher has been calling it, has gone from being a meme about Shiba Inus to a crypto scam to a group tearing the Federal government apart.So I thought I would use the title of this piece to make a joke. Like Musk’s humor it’s puerile and not funny. What’s also not funny is what Musk’s team has done to small government agencies, like USAID & CFPB that really help people, not to mention the irrational firing of thousands of government employees that appear to be screwing up the NIH, the National Parks,…

By KIM BELLARD Many people don’t realize it, but a hundred years ago America was something of a scientific backwater. Oh, sure, we had the occasional Nobel laureate, but the center of science was in Europe, particularly Germany. Then in the early 1930’s the Nazis decided that “purity” – of political ideas, of blood – was more important than truth, making life uncomfortable at best and deadly at worst for their scientists. So hundreds of them fled, many of them ending up in the U.S. And – voila! – American science came of age and hasn’t looked back. Until now.…

By ALEX AZAR Presidential transitions are always a time of great change, but few leaders have ushered in a shift as sweeping as the rewiring of one-seventh of the U.S. economy. President Trump has the opportunity to do just that by doubling down on the health transformation achievements of his first term. A key to success is continuing the shift from a fee-for-service (FFS) healthcare model to value-based care (VBC). The current FFS model continues to deliver higher costs and greater utilization of healthcare resources—but not better outcomes for patients. By contrast, a VBC model ties provider payments to quality patient care…

Natalie Schneider is CEO of Fort Health, a relatively new entrant into the children’s mental health market. Fort Health’s modus operandi is to partner with (i.e. market via) pediatricians to get them to refer patients. They are delivering integrated care and something called collaborative care…a newer model that has more frequent and shorter interventions and is more affordable. Natalie is concerned that only 20% of current psychiatric care for pediatric patients is currently evidenced-based and measured. Part of their secret sauce is through a partnership with the Child Mind Institute, and they also deliver a series of educational offerings for…

Stuart Blitz is COO and founder of Hone Health. He comes from a long career in health tech, notably at diabetes device pioneer Agamatrix. Stuart’s been working on his aggressive social media career, but in the background he co-founded Hone Health in the male health online telehealth/pharmacy space in March 2020 (great timing!). It’s now raised real money ($33m last month), has expanded to the other half of the population (women, too!), and is finding a space for itself in the cash-pay space where HIMS, Roman et al are well known. We had a great conversation about how that space…

By GABRIELLE GOLDBLATT Highly relevant, high-resolution data streams are essential to high-stakes decision making across industries. You wouldn’t expect an investment banker making deals without full market visibility or a grocery store to stock shelves without data on what’s selling and what’s not—so why are we not leaning more into data-driven approaches in healthcare?  Sensor-based measures, data collected from wearables and smart technologies, often continuously and outside the clinic, can drive more precise and cost-effective treatment strategies. Yet, in many cases, they’re not used to the fullest potential – either because they’re not covered by insurance or they’re treated as…