Who Is Dr. Kanner?
I am a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School who spent well over four decades in primary care practice near Boston. I had the privilege of decades-long continuity of care with hundreds of people who relied on me. I had a front row seat in learning and applying the spectacular medical advances of the past four decades. Almost two decades ago I began to write regularly for my patients to explain the complexities of medical science and human physiology and translate that into language readily understandable by all. The wide-ranging content included fact-based nutrition counseling, how new medications work, detailed risk guidelines during the pandemic, and human physiology explainers.
I am a graduate of the Sloan School of Management at MIT with experience in solving health care problems in federal and state government. I also developed and sold one of the first medical records applications in the early days of personal computerization. Consequently I have a broad understanding of how our health system works, and doesn’t, what might be done to improve it, and why that has not happened. I have provided my health care analyses (e.g., how Obama Care will work, why primary care is dying) to my patients for almost two decades.
Dr. Kanner on Why This Website?
I loved medical practice. I believe every patient deserves an intelligent, focused, scientifically grounded, calm and sympathetic primary physician as his or her ally for that person’s long-term well-being. I attempted to be that person for thousands of patients over the past fifty years.
I also am convinced that properly functioning primary care offices are the key to effective health care, and that the long-term economic starvation of primary care through poor insurance reimbursement is the root cause of the malfunction of our current health care system, where everyone, patients and professionals alike, are unsatisfied and stressed.
Finally, medical science is fascinating, whether cellular biology, physiology or computing. I urgently want to know how things work. I am grateful to be alive now and participating in the explosion of biomedical knowledge of the past two decades, which shows every sign of expanding at even faster rates in coming years. I work hard to acquire that new knowledge and greatly enjoy translating and illuminating the advances for the benefit of my patients and others, which I present in this website.