Newsroom

He infuses mercy into practice of medicine

July 7th 2009 | in Boston Globe, Newsroom

The Boston Globe – 12/8/2008 By Billy Baker – Globe Correspondent View Online Article Thirty years later, Dr. Stephen Bergman is comfortable shifting his posture back into appraisal position. Everything has come full circle, he thinks, and he’s just put the bookend on a ride that began in 1978 when he wrote a book, under [...]

Read more

Golfing with Updike

July 6th 2009 | in Boston Globe, Newsroom, Op-Ed

Boston Globe July 6, 2009 John and I met in 1979 at a writer’s party, shortly after my first novel came out. My impression was clouded by nervous awe, but luckily it was summer and our conversation turned to golf, John’s passion, and my sport at our shared alma mater, Harvard. A week later I [...]

Read more

Getting in the way of a doctor’s calling – E. Goodman

June 19th 2009 | in Boston Globe, Newsroom

By Ellen Goodman | June 19, 2009 THERE WILL BE time to talk about costs and coverage, about public and private plans, about reasoning and rationing in healthcare reform. So the president began this week speaking to the workers in the system: doctors. At the meeting of the American Medical Association, Barack Obama tackled the [...]

Read more

The pitting of doctor against doctor

June 7th 2009 | in Boston Globe, Newsroom, Op-Ed

Boston Globe June 7, 2009 THE REASONS for the shortage of primary-care doctors have been clearly described: low pay, long hours, the crossword puzzle of insurance forms required to get paid – which leads to three administrative assistants for every doctor. But the issue is being framed using a classic tactic of the private insurance [...]

Read more

Valor and fear in surgeons

October 13th 2008 | in Boston Globe, Newsroom, Op-Ed

By Stephen Bergman | October 13, 2008 RECENTLY A Boston hospital was cited for “hours violations” by the Accreditation Committee for Graduate Medical Education (one of 227 violators this year), and was told it would jeopardize its accreditation as a surgery training program if it did not correct the problems – which it acknowledged “is [...]

Read more

A strike for better healthcare

August 5th 2007 | in Boston Globe, Newsroom, Op-Ed

By Stephen J. Bergman | August 5, 2007 SOON AFTER HMO/managed care came to Massachusetts in the late ’80s, I got a call from a patient I had admitted to the 28-day alcohol unit at the hospital. He said that he was being discharged after three days because that was all that the HMO would [...]

Read more