Opt Out
If you are planning on complying with MACRA, make sure to allot the appropriate time and funding necessary to update/upgrade your practice. Realize that the measures will be arbitrary, the data implementation arduous, and the moments for live patient care fleeting. Expect that no matter how Herculean the task may be, the finish line will move often and unexpectedly. Prepare to get discouraged when your software needs to be updated, maybe every year, at a cost. At least someone will be profiting from all this wheel spinning.Check, double check, triple check the data. There will be a host of governmental ...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - February 1, 2017 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
Opt Out
If you are planning on complying with MACRA, make sure to allot the appropriate time and funding necessary to update/upgrade your practice. Realize that the measures will be arbitrary, the data implementation arduous, and the moments for live patient care fleeting. Expect that no matter how Herculean the task may be, the finish line will move often and unexpectedly. Prepare to get discouraged when your software needs to be updated, maybe every year, at a cost. At least someone will be profiting from all this wheel spinning.Check, double check, triple check the data. There will be a host of governmental ...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - January 31, 2017 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
A Stitch in Time
At first I thought the beeping was coming from the television. I had just settled back into the couch after tucking my daughter into bed for the second time. Her tummy was hurting. It had been doing that a lot lately. Especially on Sunday nights with the specter of Monday morning looming large. She was getting headaches, stomachaches, nausea. It had been going on for some time.My son is similar. His headaches and bellyaches come and go. He is famous for vomiting at any given moment and then feeling fine the next. And to think of it, we have all been under the weather lately.&nbs...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - January 30, 2017 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
An American Story
Sitting in the waiting room of the Oval Office surrounded by his family, Sam found it both fortuitous and ironic that he had changed his name years ago. Amongst a flurry of millions of pressing yet inconsequential decisions, Americanizing his Iranian name, Saeed, would later save him some grief during 9/11. He looked up at the line of government workers and their families wending it's way through the hallways and ending abruptly at the President's office. One of the security guards had taken pity on Sam. His eighty year old body hobbled by a bad knee, broken years ago in a tunnel explosion during his ye...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - January 28, 2017 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
I Hear the Water, I Hear the Birds
Hello. hello...Pause. You know my heart jumps every time I see your name come up on the phone!Every child secretly creates a story about the adult they will eventually become. A fantasy adorned with all the trappings of honor, success, and beauty. We imagine a world in which we will make a difference; touch those we come in contact with. Especially if you aspire toward the medical profession. Our particular daydream involves rushing into a room with stethoscope bouncing back and forth around neck. With expertise we bark a series of orders, maybe grab defibrillator paddles. The patient si...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - January 25, 2017 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
Palliative Care Is...
Palliative care is...I wait intently as the board members rearrange themselves in their seats and look up expectantly. Silence. I wasn't going to let it be that easy. I repeat myself and pause again. This time a few tentative answers flutter up to the podium.hospice...comfort care...end of life...giving up?Now this is something I can work with. I clear my throat and smile broadly.Palliative care is a philosophy.I can't help but launch into a series of idioms. I talk of the difference between the forest and the trees. I invoke Osler's famous quote about how the great (palliative) physician trea...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - January 23, 2017 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
Us and Them
I think about her from time to time. More often than I should. Being mere acquaintances, there is a certain frequency that goes above and beyond coincidence. I contemplate what it must have been like working as a second year resident in the ICU (I was an intern at the time). Getting a severe headache and wandering down to the emergency room in a daze. Strangely similar to what happened to my father. But she didn't die.Maybe worse. She was diagnosed with Glioblastoma Multiforme, a uniformly fatal brain cancer. She suffered through a stay in the same ICU she was scheduled to cover for the ...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - January 20, 2017 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
Bear Claws and Veterans Who Never Die
Every morning we awaited ravenously for the bear claws. The director of The VA would saunter by the residents room and refresh the cardboard box with various pastries, Danishes, and bear claws. Like zombies, our sleep deprived bodies would communally aggregate in the corner and devour our prey. Stacks and stacks of sugary pastries.The VA was located conveniently in the middle of a food desert. The neighborhood was so crime ridden that no delivery person would agree to drive up. There was no cafeteria. So we ate bear claws. Sometimes, during a thirty six hour shift, for breakfast, lunch, a...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - January 18, 2017 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
