January 15, 2019, Vol 321, No. 2, Pages 119-216

This Viewpoint summarizes recommendations from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality for improving antibiotic use and safety that encourages clinicians to ask if antibiotics are necessary, and to use testing and deliberate judgment to decide which ones, for how long, and if coverage can be narrowed or the drugs stopped altogether.

In this Viewpoint, Sandro Galea acknowledges reasons physicians have traditionally been hesitant to speak out publicly on matters of politics and public health, and reviews how shifting roles and means of communication are forcing practitioners to reconsider that hesitancy and engage in controversies of public health concern, such as gun violence.

This Viewpoint discusses free or reduced tuition programs for medical students and the implications for diversifying the health care workforce, filling shortages in primary care specialties, improving patient access, closing the health disparities gap, and improving population health.

This Viewpoint reviews the rationale for intention-to-treat (ITT) analyses of randomized trials, explains how commonly used alternatives reintroduce confounding that randomization is intended to eliminate, and emphasizes that even an ITT analysis is no substitute for informed scientific and clinical judgement when interpreting trial results.

This Viewpoint discusses new fee-for-service billing codes introduced by CMS for reimbursement of virtual care including e-consults, remote physiologic monitoring, and video and image review, and proposes strategies to incentivize the activities to promote coordinated care.