Senior living: When the doctor needs a checkup

By Paula Span, KFF Health News

He was a surgical oncologist at a hospital in a Southern city, a 78-year-old whose colleagues had begun noticing troubling behavior in the operating room.

During procedures, he seemed “hesitant, not sure of how to go on to the next step without being prompted” by assistants, said Mark Katlic, director of the Aging Surgeon Program at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore.

The chief of surgery, concerned about the doctor’s cognition, “would not sign off...