As a primary care provider in San Francisco’s Mission District for 32 years, Dr. Bodenheimer took care of low-income, mostly Latina patients. He did his best to make their lives better. But as the years passed, Dr. Bodenheimer realized that he hadn’t been doing a very good job helping his patients, especially those with chronic […]

Epidurals, spinal anesthesia, and analgesics work well against labor pains. However, they do have some side effects including nausea and vomiting as well as increasing the chance that some assisted birth is needed. There are some natural ways to help with labor pains and most of them orient around relaxation. In this episode of #AskDrJonas, I discuss how […]

“Our healthcare system is obsessed with delivering medical services, performing procedures and prescribing medications. It really needs to become obsessed with producing health. That is—or should be—the goal of healthcare. Yet, as a nation, the U.S., is not nearly as healthy as it should be or could be. We need a new approach—not only in […]

How would you describe your own medical education? I studied medicine in the late ’70s to the early ’80s and received the typical American mainstream medical education of the time. Knowledge was handed down from the most senior practitioners and department chairs through a strict hierarchy: senior faculty, junior faculty, fellows, residents and then medical […]

As a primary care provider, I’ve found that the SOAP note is too narrow to effectively grasp the causes of and approaches needed for many of the conditions I see – conditions like chronic pain, obesity, diabetes and hypertension.