Structured settlements are ruining patients ’ lives
There are a lot of TV commercials for structured settlement companies these days. You know, the companies that say if you are cash-strapped but have a structured settlement they will be happy to buy your settlement and give you “cash now.” Some of the commercials are quite clever and catchy featuring everything from operettas to boy bands. After seeing so many of these, one has to conclude that there has to be a lot of people in this situation but how is this possible? After all, if these people are getting ” large cash settlements” how come they are in this fix? Two experiences I had may hold provi...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - January 10, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/thomas-d-guastavino" rel="tag" > Thomas D. Guastavino, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Malpractice Primary Care Source Type: blogs
Jahi McMath Now Directly Attacks Brain Death Medical Criteria
For the past few years in her ongoing medical malpractice litigation, Jahi McMath has focused on establishing that she no longer satisfies prevailing medical criteria for brain death, even though she satisfied those criteria in December 2013.
However,... (Source: blog.bioethics.net)
Source: blog.bioethics.net - January 7, 2018 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Thaddeus Mason Pope, JD, PhD Tags: Health Care syndicated Source Type: blogs
Plastic surgeon quits and couldn ’t get a job at Chick-fil-A
I just got off the phone with Paul, a highly-sought-after plastic surgeon in New York.
“I don’t want to be a doctor anymore,” Paul says. “What else can I do? I have lots of restaurant experience. I’ve worked in 15 restaurants during my life. It’s not easy, but I could do it. I did research on chains and franchises, and I chose Chick-fil-A. Three months ago I applied to be an owner/operator. I got through the first application and got declined the second round of applications. They are extremely picky. Nearly 20,000 apply, and only a few are chosen.”
I’m shocked he was declined.
“It wasn’t a crushing blo...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - January 4, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/pamela-wible" rel="tag" > Pamela Wible, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Surgery Source Type: blogs
Physician asset protection: Is it a good idea to pay down debts?
Being in a high income, high-risk field I often think of asset protection. The lawsuit may not come from medical work, but from an auto accident or someone slipping on my front step. All of these can lead to suits, and as a high-income earner, we all have a target on our back. The last thing I want to do is work hard to save money to then have it taken away by one lawsuit. There are of course many ways to protect your assets, and they should all be put into place.
Insurance
Malpractice insurance
For one, having a good malpractice insurance as a physician is key. Hopefully, your group has paid for your insurance, and it has...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - December 17, 2017 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/dads-dollars-debts" rel="tag" > Dads Dollars Debts, MD < /a > Tags: Finance Practice Management Source Type: blogs
Hey Watson, Can I Sue You?
By JAYSON CHUNG & AMANDA ZINK
Currently, three South Korean medical institutions – Gachon University Gil Medical Center, Pusan National University Hospital and Konyang University Hospital – have implemented IBM’s Watson for Oncology artificial intelligence (AI) system. As IBM touts the Watson for Oncology AI’s to “[i]dentify, evaluate and compare treatment options” by understanding the longitudinal medical record and applying its training to each unique patient, questions regarding the status and liability of these AI machines have arisen.
Given its ability to interpret data and present treatment op...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 10, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Could Artificial Intelligence destroy radiology by litigation claims?
By, Hugh Harvey MBBS BSc (Hons) FRCR MD (res)
We’ve all heard the big philosophical arguments and debate between rockstar entrepreneurs and genius academics – but have we stopped to think exactly how the AI revolution will play out on our own turf?
At RSNA this year I posed the same question to everyone I spoke to: What if radiology AI gets into the wrong hands? Judging by the way the crowds voted with their feet by packing out every lecture on AI, radiologists would certainly seem to be very aware of the looming seismic shift in the profession – but I wanted to know if anyone was considering the potential side eff...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 3, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: at RogueRad Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
The accused physicians who are my colleagues
From the earliest days on the clinical wards, everyone probably worked with a senior physician who knew how to game the system. It might be doing a rigid sigmoidoscopy on admission for every patient who had a rectum — something not the standard of care forty years ago. Or maybe it was accepting a pharmaceutical company subsidized tax-deductible junket under the guise of CME at a place with sparkling white sand in February — something that might have been the standard of care 40 years ago. While people would question the propriety of these things, there did not seem to be any material challenge to the legality. And the ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - December 2, 2017 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/richard-plotzker" rel="tag" > Richard Plotzker, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Malpractice Public Health & Policy Source Type: blogs
The Six Worst U.S. Health Disasters of the Last 50 Years
Up until the first half of the twentieth century, large-scale health disasters were mostly due to natural causes (earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, etc.) or infections (e.g., smallpox, influenza epidemics, cholera). But something peculiar happened as we entered the second half of the century: Health disasters due to natural causes became dwarfed by large-scale health disasters that are man-made.
Here’s a list of the Six Worst U.S. Health Disasters of the Last 50 Years, mostly man-made phenomena that have exacted huge tolls: widespread disease, premature death, poorly managed (though nonetheless highly profitable fo...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - December 2, 2017 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Undoctored Wheat Belly Lifestyle autoimmune gluten grain-free grains Inflammation low-carb Weight Loss Source Type: blogs
Practicing Medicine While Black (Part II)
By KIP SULLIVAN
Managed care advocates see quality problems everywhere and resource shortages nowhere. If the Leapfrog Group, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, or some other managed care advocate were in charge of explaining why a high school football team lost to the New England Patriots, their explanation would be “poor quality.”
If a man armed with a knife lost a fight to a man with a gun, ditto: “Poor quality.” And their solution would be more measurement of the “quality,” followed by punishment of the losers for getting low grades on the “quality” report card and rewards for the winners. The ob...
Source: The Health Care Blog - November 27, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized CMS Kip Sullivan value-based care Source Type: blogs
These are the biggest medical issues of 2017
Periodically we should reflect on what challenges face patients and physicians. Over the past few days, I have worked on a list of the issues that concern me the most. I welcome suggestions for expanding the list.
1. Diagnostic errors. All patient care requires that we make the proper diagnosis. Too often we make errors. A recent paper estimated that 30 percent of cellulitis admissions did not have cellulitis. A similar paper found almost the same estimate for community-acquired pneumonia admissions. The most common reason for successful malpractice claims is diagnostic errors. Have they increased? Members ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - November 22, 2017 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/robert-centor" rel="tag" > Robert Centor, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Hospital-Based Medicine Primary Care Public Health & Policy Source Type: blogs
HIPAA May be the Least of Your Compliance Worries
The following is a guest blog post by Mike Semel from Semel Consulting. Check out all of Mike Semel’s EMR and HIPAA blog posts.
What requirements have you hidden away?
I visited a new healthcare client last week, and asked if anything in particular made them call us for help with their HIPAA compliance. They surprised me by saying that their insurance company had refused to sell them a cyber-liability/data breach insurance policy, after they saw the answers on our client’s application.
When was the last time you heard about an insurance company not selling a policy? That’s like McDonalds looking you over, and t...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - November 21, 2017 Category: Information Technology Authors: Guest Blogger Tags: Healthcare HealthCare IT HIPAA General HIPAA Training HIPAA BA HIPAA Business Associates HIPAA Compliance Mike Semel Semel Consulting Source Type: blogs
Could MIPS Data Be Used Against Physicians?
One of the major changes thanks to MACRA and its associated Quality Payment Program (QPP) is the creation of MIPS, of the Merit-based Incentive Payment System. Much has been made about this new way physicians will be evaluated under Medicare. However, we have not seen the take of MIPS scores being used in other domains, such as medical malpractice lawsuits, until we came across this consulting firm’s hypothetical. Could MIPS data be used against physicians?
Hypothetical Malpractice Case
As described on MyMipsScores’ blog:
“[H]ere is another collateral effect of the MIPS score. This one is for our friends in the l...
Source: Policy and Medicine - November 20, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan - Policy & Medicine Writing Staff Source Type: blogs
Got real rights? Not when seeking health care.
Until genuine rights are extended to all patients, the ongoing health-care-reform saga perpetrated by Congress and executive leadership will continue to fail the American people. Many Americans have suffered and died because of a broken health-care-delivery system. One of us lost a 19-year old son due to lack of certain patient rights – specifically the right to evidence-based medicine and the right to a complete discharge plan from his hospital. His cardiologists failed to replace potassium as required by an evidence based guideline for patients with low serum potassium and concomitant cardiac arrhythmias. He had coll...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - November 18, 2017 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/john-t-james-and-michael-f-mascia" rel="tag" > John T. James, PhD and Michael F. Mascia, MD, MPH < /a > Tags: Patient Hospital-Based Medicine Medicare Patients Source Type: blogs
Physician wellness at the personal, institutional, and cultural levels
Do you know we have record rates of physician burnout, dissatisfaction, and suicide? Ongoing shortages in primary care, without improvement in sight? Physicians exiting medicine earlier than in the past?
What about burnout? Do you know it affects patients as well as their doctors? Affects physicians’ families and friends? Increases mistakes and malpractice risk? Affects patient adherence and outcomes? Is costly to the entire system?
How do we start to fix this? The framework for a discussion on physician wellness begins with attention to three levels: personal wellness, organizational wellness, and wellness within ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - November 15, 2017 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/kathy-stepien" rel="tag" > Kathy Stepien, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Hospital-Based Medicine Practice Management Primary Care Source Type: blogs
It ’s time for medicine to share its power
In the movie Malice, Alec Baldwin plays Dr. Jed Hill, a surgeon who gives a famous speech during a deposition in a medical malpractice case. “”If you’re looking for God, he was in operating room #2 on November 17th, and he doesn’t like to be second-guessed … I am God.”
No one wants a doctor like that. And yet, maybe we do. We yearn for someone capable of healing all of our wounds, fixing what is wrong, performing miracles in the OR. We expect someone to be able to cut into our brains, hearts, and bellies, but somehow also expect that same someone to deny the inherent power of those tasks. Power is fine in...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - November 15, 2017 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/heather-hansen" rel="tag" > Heather Hansen < /a > Tags: Physician Hospital-Based Medicine Practice Management Surgery Source Type: blogs
