Healthcare, like the seasons, can be cyclical in nature. The springtime brings allergies, while the fall and winter bring colds and the flu (and these days, Covid-19).

Since we’re now in the thick of summertime, Healthcare Brew asked primary care doctors how their practices change in the summer months.

Lauren Block, an academic general internist at New York’s largest system, Northwell Health, told Healthcare Brew that the average number of patients she sees doesn’t change much in the summertime—but the reasons her patients come to see her does.

She tends to see fewer instances of certain respiratory viruses, but there’s an uptick in contact-related illnesses—like hand, foot, and mouth disease and norovirus—which can be transmitted in swimming pools or at the beach, she said.

A big concern is sun exposure, and Block tends to see patients with sun poisoning, heat rash, and sunburns. She said she tries to do preventive counseling with her patients about the importance of sunscreen and the effects of sun damage, as well as perform regular skin exams—especially for those with a family history of or predisposition to skin cancer.

William Kornrich, an internal medicine physician at NYU Langone’s primary care practice in  Riverhead, Long Island, told Healthcare Brew he does tend to see a spike in patient volume in the summer months, since Long Island is a summer destination. Like Block, he also sees a lot of sun-related illnesses during the sunny months, as well as mild to severe forms of dehydration.

In summer, both Block and Kornrich said they start to see patients for things like insect bites, bee stings, or tick-borne illnesses like Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever, which causes fever, rash, and muscle pain, and can be deadly if not treated early.

Keep reading here.—MA

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Maia at [email protected]. For completely confidential conversations, ask Maia for her number on Signal.

What unites clinicians and patients alike, no matter which area of healthcare they’re in? Dedication to better health + the desire for a more human experience.

To dive more deeply into this perspective, GE HealthCare launched an industry study amplifying the POVs of 7.5k clinicians and patients across 8 countries to better understand what their vision for the future of healthcare could look like. That’s a lotta data.

And with it all, GEHC was able to uncover key barriers that need to be overcome to get there.

Here’s a sneak peek: Patient priorities for the future include faster detection, flexibility, and accessible data, and 61% of clinicians believe AI can support clinical decision-making.

See what else was reported—and how healthcare systems can up their resiliency.

The Supreme Court’s June 2022 reversal of long-standing national abortion protections under Roe v. Wade triggered a series of state bans, leaving many people seeking abortions to grapple with the decision of traveling out of state for the procedure. Despite the costs and risks involved with such travel, many have done so.

New data from the Society of Family Planning’s #WeCount report found that total US clinician-provided abortions fell by nearly 26,000 in the nine months following the court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.

States where abortion remains legal saw some increases—even though those gains were not as high as expected in places like the Northeast and the West Coast, which are generally seen as abortion safe havens.

But due to their proximity to ban states, some of the states that saw the largest increases in the total number of clinician-provided abortions from July 2022 to March 2023 have taken steps to pull back abortion access, the report found. For example, Florida saw 12,460 more abortions during that period, while North Carolina had a 7,930 case increase. California, by contrast, saw 4,260 more clinician-provided abortions in the nine months after the Dobbs decision.

The increase in abortions in the southeastern region is likely because states like Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina are easier “access points” for the procedure for people from nearby ban states—“even if those receiving states had abortion restrictions such as mandated in-person counseling and waiting periods,” the report noted.

But that trend could soon change: North Carolina’s 12-week abortion ban will take effect on July 1. Efforts to restrict abortion access in Florida and South Carolina, meanwhile, have been held up in court.

Keep reading here.—SY

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Shannon at [email protected]. For completely confidential conversations, ask Shannon for her number on Signal.

Today’s top healthcare reads.

Stat: Patients in a clinical trial for a weight loss drug reported losing, on average, 24% of their body weight. (NBC News)

Quote: “You cannot imagine what you’re going to see over the next 30 years. The pace of advancement is in an exponential phase right now.”—Barney Graham, an immunologist deeply involved in the creation of mRNA vaccines, on the so-called golden age of medicine (the New York Times)

Read: Hikers in Texas are dying more frequently from extreme heat. (Texas Monthly)