Posts by Philip M. O'Halloran, MD

Parents and student athletes often wonder why sports physicals are necessary when the athlete is young, healthy and feels generally fine. The answer is that in a very small — tiny, actually — subset of all young athletes, there are those with potentially fatal heart conditions. These can be “structural,” such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy or…

Melanoma is the most feared form or skin cancer. This is because of the high mortality rate. There are many risk factors for this deadly disease but one of the lesser known risks occurs during childhood. When parents fail to protect their kids from the sun, they can suffer blister burns, which are known to…

This is believed to be a concern for 80% of the US population. However, the actual risk of contracting Covid from a typical doctor’s office or clinic is exceedingly low. The reason is because of the precautions taken to lessen that risk and because of the general low likelihood of catching Covid from brief encounters.…

Here in Michigan, the daily new cases peaked at 10,140 on November 20th. Currently in early March, 2021, we are at 932, so the situation is much improved! Deaths attributed to the virus are also way down. It’s always important to keep things in perspective. Although several subgroups of patients in older, sicker demographics are…

TELEMEDICINE LAUNCH THIS TUESDAY!! Village Health is kicking off it’s TOCKDOC telemedicine program this Tuesday, April 14th. You can download the app right now in our Beta testing form in Testflight (in the Apple App Store). It’s a simple on-boarding process but our staff will be happy to talk you thru any issues on the…

As the Coronavirus epidemic spreads across the country, patients deserve guidance on how to protect themselves. Village Health follows and refers to the CDC Guidelines [https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/index.html] as the most up to date source for information on this serious infectious disease threat. How can we distinguish between common colds, bronchitis, community-acquired pneumonia and Coronavirus? We start…

As Michigan’s COVID-19 case count rises, patients want to know when they need to be tested for the virus. As recently as last week, the answer would have focused on questions about known exposure from recent air travel, cruises and contacts with known Coronavirus positive cases. As the virus spreads across our state (110 cases…