First Opinion Podcast

The high cost of cancer treatment in the U.S. is literally killing people. “Over a quarter of cancer patients delay medical care, go without care, or make changes in their cancer treatment because of cost,” Ezekiel J. Emanuel, an oncologist and co-director of the Health Care Transformation Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote in a recent First Opinion essay. But Emanuel says there’s a solution: Cancer patients shouldn’t have to pay any out-of-pocket costs for their treatment, especially in the first (and typically most expensive) year after diagnosis.

We've all had the experience of a clinician staring at screen while asking us sensitive questions to fill out our electronic health records. But that frustrating experience is made even worse by a new trend in health care. As Sanjay Basu wrote in a recent First Opinion, hospitals are using so-called "screen and refer" systems to identify people with social needs, like those who are experiencing domestic violence or hunger. The idea is that workers ask patients about their needs, then refer them to organizations such as food banks that can help. But according to Basu, a primary care provider, these well-intended efforts are instead dehumanizing and ineffective for patients, and burdensome for the organizations buried by referrals.

As an oncologist, Jennifer Lycette gets to know her patients particularly well. She’s doubtful that artificial intelligence could replace that personal connection, but new research based on, of all things, Reddit Q&As, says otherwise. New study findings raised questions about the potential for using chatbots, like ChatGPT, to help physicians answer questions submitted from patients through electronic medical records — a task that can take hours of stolen, rushed time between appointments at the clinic.

Alex Rosenblat is particularly careful when it comes to her digital privacy. She requests to fill out paper forms instead of digital ones; she documents and tracks what she signs. But even her diligence can't always save her. Rosenblat recently spent months retracing her digital steps after Phreesia, a company that collects demographic information, claimed to have her authorization to share her data — authorization she knew she hadn't consented to. This week, Rosenblat talks to host and editor Torie Bosch about tracking down her own information and the amorphous harm caused by invasions of privacy.

In training to become a physician, medical residency can be a grueling period. Now, medical residents across the country have begun fighting to unionize their ranks. In Boston, residents at Massachusetts General Brigham — a major medical system — recently garnered enough votes to file for a union election. In her first episode as host of the "First Opinion Podcast," editor Torie Bosch speaks to two MGB residents, Minali Nigam and David Bernstein, with differing opinions on the best next step forward for their cohort.

After two years as host of the First Opinion Podcast and many more as the founding editor of STAT's expansive, authoritative First Opinion platform, Pat Skerrett put down his editing pen and microphone to start a new chapter: retirement. But before he left, he sat down with Torie Bosch, who has just joined STAT as our new First Opinion editor.  They chatted about hopes for the section, editorial pet peeves, and the vampire bats of Costa Rica.

When Ken Duckworth was a child, his family didn't talk about mental health, especially not his father's bipolar disorder. It was an untouchable topic, but Duckworth knew his father shouldn't be seen as a lost cause. Instead, his father and others like him might actually have critical expertise on how to navigate the world with mental illness — expertise they gained not through books and studying but through lived experience.

In a special event as part of STAT's Open Doors initiative, the "First Opinion Podcast" was recorded live this week in front of an audience with returning guest Jay Baruch. Not long after being a guest on the first episode of the "First Opinion Podcast" in February 2021 on the many stories he's written for STAT in his time working as an emergency room physician, Baruch penned a letter to his boss spelling out his intention to leave medicine behind. But the simple act of writing the letter transformed his understanding of his work and hooked him back in.

The idea that the narrowing gap between Covid-19 deaths among white Americans and Americans of color represents a racial equity success story is being bandied about. Not so fast, says Nathan T. Chomilo, a pediatrician and internist at the University of Minnesota Medical School. This conversation emerged from the First Opinion essay "Covid-19 is an inverse equity story, not a racial equity success story" that was written by Marina Del Rio, Chomilo, and Neil A. Lewis, Jr.

As states begin to receive money from the multitude of lawsuits and settlements the opioid makers and distributors have agreed to pay, the number of overdose deaths in the country continue to increase, reaching an all-time high in 2021. Researcher Linda Richter worries that not enough of the settlement funds, upward of $22 billion, are going toward early-stage prevention measures.