Providers need to do a better job of explaining to patients what tests we order and why. And we need to be available to explain and answer questions when scary results come in. Important in this era of primary-care physician burnout, providers need to be reimbursed for the significant hours that appropriate and sensitive patient-portal communication demands.
Judith Meyer
Judith Meyer is executive editor of the Sun Journal, Kennebec Journal, the Morning Sentinel and the Western Maine weekly newspapers of the Sun Media Group. She serves as vice president of the Maine Freedom of Information Coalition and is a member of the Right to Know Advisory Committee to the Legislature. A journalist since 1990 and former editorial page editor for the Sun Journal, she was named Maine’s Journalist of the Year in 2003. She serves on the New England Newspaper & Press Association Board of Directors and was the 2018 recipient of the Judith Vance Weld Brown Spirit of Journalism Award by the New England Society of Newspaper Editors. A fellow of the National Press Foundation and the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism, she attended George Washington University, lives in Auburn with her husband, Phil, and is an active member of the Bicycle Coalition of Maine.
Posted inOp-Eds
Good luck trying to bag a Santa this year
The nationwide worker shortage has stricken an array of industries, as varied as fast food, textile mills and long-haul trucking. The crisis, as news outlets have been chronicling with increasing worry, extends all the way up to the North Pole.
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Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
Leonard Pitts Jr.: ‘True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar’
Giving is good, and every person who is able to do so, should. But it would be even better to restructure the edifice that produces a need for giving — to realize, as author Celine-Marie Pascale puts it, that what America really needs is not a “seasonal moment of generosity” but “a reckoning for justice.”
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
Bob Neal: The Countryman: Inflation of two kinds, or three
Each buyer has an equilibrium point for each purchase. Some willingly pay more, some don’t. At the $5 a pound I paid for my Thanksgiving bird, I was at my equilibrium point. But $5 was way too far to the right of equilibrium for the vast majority of turkey eaters.
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
Leo Goddard: Trapped in a pandemic: How the incarcerated population is directly affected by COVID-19
These people are already doing time for their crimes. Do they really deserve to have their lives put at risk by a preventable illness?
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
Whitney Durgin: American definitions of freedom are being manipulated by the media we consume
It is important to take a look at how the media has the disturbing power to impact the livelihood of an entire country just by abusing the meaning of one word. Freedom has been turned into a weapon for selfishness and division instead of a call for unity and equality. This should not be ignored as we continue to march toward an irreversible rift in this country.