Medmic

Doctor, Doctor:

River Elizabeth Hall (she/her) is a poet and naturalist with degrees from Fairhaven College and Antioch University Seattle. Her work has appeared in Bear Review, Main Street Rag, Moist Poetry, Nimrod, Parentheses Journal and Tinderbox among others.

She is a 2023 Best of the Net Nominee and winner of Tinderbox Poetry’s 2022 Majda Gama Editor’s Prize. In 2021, she was a semi-finalist in the The Floating Bridge Chapbook competition and was long-listed for the Palette Poetry Prize and the Frontier Open. She is the founder of Seattle Writers Circle, an online workshop series dedicated to creating supportive community, inclusion and creative exploration for writers of all genres and abilities. Learn more about her writing and other offerings at RiverElizabethHall.com

The psychological harm from health insurance denials to patients and physicians cannot be undone

JL Lycette, MD, is a hematologist/oncologist and writer in rural Oregon. Her medical perspective and narrative medicine essays can be found in NEJM, JAMA, Journal of Clinical Oncology, The ASCO Post, Medscape, and Doximity, among other places.

Her debut novel, a speculative medical thriller, THE ALGORITHM WILL SEE YOU NOW (Black Rose Writing Press), is out now. See more of her writing on her website, https://jenniferlycette.com, and connect with her on Twitter @JL_Lycette

How Cigna Saves Millions by Having Its Doctors Reject Claims Without Reading Them

Internal documents and former company executives reveal how Cigna doctors reject patients’ claims without opening their files. “We literally click and submit,” one former company doctor said.  

This article was orginalluy published by Propublica on March 25, 2023

https://www.propublica.org/article/cigna-pxdx-medical-health-insurance-rejection-claims

Burn It Up

Alexis Del Cid is a journalist and TV anchor for The University of Kansas Health System Medical News Network.

She Is also an EMMY winner.

With Thanks to Dr. Parvataneni

Naomi Dean teaches ESL at a public elementary school in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, where she lives with her husband, son, and daughter. Naomi’s work has recently appeared in Poetica, Sylvia, The Madrigal, NiftyLit, Collateral, Plainsongs and JAMA.

Something Else

Naomi Dean teaches ESL at a public elementary school in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, where she lives with her husband, son, and daughter. Naomi’s work has recently appeared in Poetica, Sylvia, The Madrigal, NiftyLit, Collateral, Plainsongs and JAMA.

If My Physical Ailments Took a Road Trip

Ben Groner III (Nashville, TN), recipient of a Pushcart Prize nomination
and Texas A&M University’s 2014 Gordone Award for undergraduate
poetry, has work published in Rust + Moth, GASHER, Whale Road
Review, The Shore, Cheat River Review, and elsewhere. You can see more of his work at.
https://bengroner.com/

This poem was originally published in The Shore.

Who Are You?

When identity confusion and mental illness presents to our Behavioral Unit

Debbie Moore-Black RN has worked in the ICU for over 30 years. Her nursing stories offer ideas to improve care, discuss dilemmas facing patients and healthcare providers, provide a little humor, and offer opinions and insight on dying & dignity.

She describers her stories as “a composite of fiction and facts and are based on the things I’ve seen and experienced. These stories are not for everyone, but they are topics that I believe shouldn’t remain in the silence.”

Bonsai Master

Over the past 30 years John Barr’s poems have been published in five books, four fine press editions, and many magazines, including The New York Times, Poetry, and others. He was also the Inaugural President of the Poetry Foundation. His newest book, The Boxer of Quirinal, will be published by Red Hen Press in June 2023.