Each member receives regular, individualized guidance on preventive care and life-style improvement. They may also attend the practice’s small group seminars to help them deal successfully with such difficult behavioral issues as proper nutrition and weight management. Additionally, members have access to the Orchard Health Care blogs where Dr. Kanner’s and Dr. Sobel’s commentaries explain, simplify and put in context current medical issues and developments reported in the professional and lay press.
Primary Care
Orchard Health Care is the membership practice for primary care medicine founded in 2006 by Steven R. Kanner, MD, a highly credentialed and experienced internist, to provide comprehensive, scientifically up-to-the-minute and personalized medical care. Dr. Eve N. Sobel, a comparably credentialed and experienced internist, joined Dr. Kanner in July 2017. Dr. David Saie joined the practice in March 2023, and assumed responsibility for Dr. Kanner’s patients when he retired in May 2023.
Immunizations
Early experience offers hope that the immunity produced will be more effective in preventing the initiation of Covid-19 disease, even beyond the critically important effect of minimizing serious disease and death. Vaccination side effects continue to be minimal, consistent with the original vaccines.
Before joining Dr. Kanner in Orchard Health Care in 2017, Dr. Sobel practiced for over 15 years in a primary care group in Wellesley sponsored by Newton-Wellesley Hospital. At Newton-Wellesley, she was regularly cited as the top internist in quality measures. She has directed many patient care improvement projects involving concerns such as managing high blood pressure and osteoporosis, as well as preventing falls in the elderly. Her patient panel includes both women and men, but comprehensive women’s care including gynecology is certainly a major focus for her.
Dr. Steven R. Kanner earned his AB from Harvard College in 1965 and his MD from Harvard Medical School in 1969. He interned in medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and completed his medical residency at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, where he was a Clinical Scholar of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He is a diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine.
He subsequently was chief of medical care for the Massachusetts department of mental health, where he was responsible for achieving substantial innovations and improvements in health care for the mentally retarded that had eluded a generation of government officials.
Similarly, we arrange X-rays, MRIs, CT scans and other such tests at Newton-Wellesley, Mass General West, Beth Israel or other imaging facilities that are appropriate for the required test, able to give us prompt electronic reports, and are most accessible and timely for your needs.
Chemotherapy
The FDA and CDC have recently authorized a second bivalent booster vaccine for individuals aged 65 and above and for those who are considered immunosuppressed (i.e., had an organ transplant or are undergoing chemotherapy). We have copied the guidance from Mass General below.
Recently I have seen data that the use of oral minoxidil in very low doses is effective (over many months) in restoring hair in men or women. It is more effective if the hair loss if partial and the follicles still intact. I have checked with dermatology colleagues and gotten their wisdom, which is highly supportive of this treatment. A side effect may be facial hair increase even at the very low dose, which is the major issue for women with midlife hair thinning. The low doses do not typically affect blood pressure.