7 essential steps to take during (and after) a restructuring or layoff
This article is sponsored by Careers by KevinMD.com.
Employer consolidation due to the mergers and acquisitions of hospitals and health systems is becoming increasingly common within the health care industry. In fact, merger and acquisition activity doubled in the first half of this year, with the volume of value health care sector deals increasing to $315.74 billion and total health care sector deals reaching more than $2.5 trillion.
Though the exact factors driving this frenzy — from lower patient admissions and reimbursements to increased pressure to improve outcomes while reducing expenses — are up for de...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - October 11, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/health-ecareers" rel="tag" > Health eCareers < /a > Tags: Finance Practice Management Source Type: blogs
Meditation, yoga, and mindfulness aren ’t going to solve physician burnout
Recently, my inbox has been overfilled with offers for programs, yoga, meditation, and a whole host of mindfulness training opportunities to combat physician burnout. I think by now everyone knows that doctors are fighting high burnout rates. But, those sending these “special offers” don’t get the root of the problem. We’re not burned out because we work long hours in a stressful job with limited time off. Rather, we are burned out because we are trying to function as doctors in a broken, dysfunctional system.
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Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - October 9, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/linda-girgis" rel="tag" > Linda Girgis, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Practice Management Source Type: blogs
A scrum master for primary care
We should consider a new position in our primary care teams — that of the scrum master. “Scrum” is a rugby term that comes from agile, a work methodology for software development that now is being applied to industry and health care.
In rugby, a scrum is a huddle where the teams come together with interlocked arms to regroup and start play again. In agile, scrum masters facilitate team huddles and cultivate the morale and energy of the group.
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Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - October 9, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/c-todd-staub" rel="tag" > C. Todd Staub, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Practice Management Primary Care Source Type: blogs
It ’s time to advocate for a new culture in medicine
The National Taskforce of Humanity in Healthcare recently published research showing physician burnout is impacting quality safety, and health care system performance — estimating that “costs for burnout-related turnover may be as high as $1.7B annually among hospital-employed physicians, and $17 billion across all U.S. physicians.” At Stanford Medicine, physician burnout costs at least $7.75M yearly.
These numbers are staggering. Growing numbers of physicians are leaving medicine (surely impacting the physician shortage) and over half of U.S. physicians are experiencing burnout.
Meditation rooms and yoga will not cu...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - October 6, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/dianne-ansari-winn" rel="tag" > Dianne Ansari-Winn, MD, MPH < /a > Tags: Physician Practice Management Source Type: blogs
What physicians need to make a telehealth program stand out
When I became a physician years ago, the idea of telehealth had barely taken hold among doctors or patients. Today, as we bask in the passage of the CHRONIC Care Act of 2017, we’re seeing dozens of use cases in stroke, emergent care, psychiatry and more that underscore telehealth’s potential.
Consumers are becoming increasingly digitally savvy too — and not just the millennials. Today, about one in five adults have tried telehealth — a number which, by all accounts, is expected to grow when new legislation takes effect and removes some of the biggest barriers to adoption. This means physicians will need to conside...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - September 21, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/sylvia-romm" rel="tag" > Sylvia Romm, MD, MPH < /a > Tags: Physician Mobile health Practice Management Source Type: blogs
Stop the money-shaming in medicine
There is a taboo in medicine. It is becoming less prominent, but it still exists. You’re not supposed to talk about money. Not how much something costs a patient, not how much you get paid, not how you invest, and certainly not about the freedom from medicine that financial independence can bring.
This first shows up as you are applying to medical school. You don’t want anyone writing a letter of recommendation or heaven forbid an admissions committee to get even a whiff of an idea that you might actually want to receive a paycheck for practicing medicine at some point down the road. It is reinforced throughout medica...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - September 18, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/james-m-dahle" rel="tag" > James M. Dahle, MD < /a > Tags: Finance Practice Management Source Type: blogs
These are the stories of how physicians are bullied
Nobody punched me in the face. Maybe I would have preferred being punched in the face, though. And yes, I was bullied. I’m not going to talk about my own experience in this post however, because I already have post-traumatic stress disorder from the experience. I’m not ready to revisit it in detail yet.
I don’t need to talk about myself to tell you about bullying in the medical arena. I know a lot of other people who have experienced it, and their experiences are plenty to talk about. Some of these people are still in their workplaces. Others have left and moved on to better things. Som...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - September 3, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/rosalind-kaplan" rel="tag" > Rosalind Kaplan, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Practice Management Source Type: blogs
3 malignant retention strategies in health care contracts
Establishing a medical career inevitably requires signing a number of contracts along the way that we are not trained to evaluate, leaving us at risk for malignant retention strategies. At the beginnings of our careers, we were obligated to sign all contracts offered to us without question. The medical school match did not leave much choice, and salary negotiations were nonexistent. This lack of choice later changed, as most of us can keenly recall receiving our first confusing offer letter while completing the last few months of training. Some of us try to sift through the legalese alone, while others will start the daunt...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - September 2, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/jonathan-zipkin" rel="tag" > Jonathan Zipkin, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Practice Management Source Type: blogs
Physician resilience: cause or symptom?
Do you ever wonder
what compels someone to walk away from their current life
to leave all they worked for — jobs, spouses, kids — behind?
The community around them are caught off guard
of how unhappy or unfulfilled or
the silent suffering
that made their life so hard.
We say it is shocking and act so surprised.
But that seems a pretense.
It’s no secret that compassion fatigue and physician burnout
are both on a steady rise.
For us in the medical community,
this can be an opportunity to reevaluate
To allow us to open the windows of hearts and souls
so our healers do not suffocate.
Medicine is an art, not a fast fo...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - September 2, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/nadia-sabri" rel="tag" > Nadia Sabri, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Practice Management Source Type: blogs
The demise of medicine: A neurologist advocates for patients and is silenced
Physicians are overwhelmed by patient loads, 10-minute visits, the wealth of documentation dictated by health insurance requirements and the overwhelming overtaking of medicine by non-physician personnel.
Wellness programs abound, which addresses the symptoms of a problem.
As medicine changed from patient to profit-centered, it marked the beginning of the end. We see articles on physicians fired or coerced into resignation for speaking up about non-physicians overstepping boundaries putting patients at risk. Physicians are “disruptors.” We see non-physicians calling themselves doctors when they are not doctors of medic...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - August 31, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/virginia-thornley" rel="tag" > Virginia Thornley, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Practice Management Public Health & Policy Source Type: blogs
10 things I ’ve learned 10 years after I finished medical school
1. Our health care system is broken, and there isn’t going to be an easy way out. Costs are too high and our outcomes too poor. There’s a lot of finger-pointing in how we got to this point, but one thing is for certain — physicians must lead the way to a better system. The heart of health care is still the doctor-patient relationship and that needs to be protected at all costs. Historically speaking, physicians have tended to shy away from the business side of medicine in lieu of caring for patients, but that’s no longer a realistic option. Physician leadership is a must.
2. Nurses are underpaid and underappreciat...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - August 30, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/kevin-tolliver" rel="tag" > Kevin Tolliver, MD, MBA < /a > Tags: Physician Hospital-Based Medicine Practice Management Source Type: blogs
Want to change the health system? Find your why.
Can the health system survive?
It comes down to the people. It is not about their work, but how they feel: feeling valued, feeling their work is valuable to those they serve, and feeling valuable doing the work. It is work as an extension of what you believe, what you love and how you want the world to be reflected back to you.
For 22 years, I have watched systems work to chart their way into the future. It is a difficult future. The Baby Boomer generation is such that it is going to be a costly future as well. It is not a problem; problems can be solved. This is a predicament, it is inevitable, it must be managed. To mana...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - August 29, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/gil-c-grimes" rel="tag" > Gil C. Grimes, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Practice Management Public Health & Policy Source Type: blogs
Chasing numbers contributes to physician burnout
A store cashier sees dozens of customers during a shift. A car tire shop mechanic may work on 20 cars. Workdays can be hard across professions.
Medicine surely does not escape this. We just don’t deal with customers or goods, despite efforts to make it look like that. A simple runny nose visit may be the closest thing to a customer who is there for a simple transaction, and in reality, they don’t even need to be there. Yet, they are welcomed additions to the daily treadmill of the “provider” to balance out the complexity of taking care of people with actual medical conditions. After all, it is a numbers game, and w...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - August 27, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/drizzlemd" rel="tag" > DrizzleMD < /a > Tags: Policy Practice Management Primary Care Source Type: blogs
Weekly Overseas Health IT Links – 25th August, 2018
Here are a few I came across last week.Note: Each link is followed by a title and few paragraphs. For the full article click on the link above title of the article. Note also that full access to some links may require site registration or subscription payment.-----https://www.digitalhealth.net/2018/08/open-source-snafu-leaves-patient-data-exposed/Open-source snafu leaves patient data exposedMillions of patient records are feared to have been jeopardised after security flaws were discovered in open-source healthcare software.Owen Hughes13 August 2018Researchers at cyber security outfit Project Insecurity discovered dozens o...
Source: Australian Health Information Technology - August 25, 2018 Category: Information Technology Authors: Dr David G More MB PhD Source Type: blogs
It ’s time to learn the basics of financial management in medical school
I’m not really sure who is at fault, but somewhere along the way, our educational system decided that teaching personal finance is unnecessary. We learn calculus, the rules of dodgeball and even sewing, but financial management is taboo. Then, all of a sudden, we head to undergrad and medical school, and before we know it, we’re in our late 20s or early 30s financially illiterate.
The consequence of this was shown in a 2014 report on U.S. Physicians’ Financial Preparedness by the AMA which showed 70% of young physicians said they felt only somewhat knowledgeable or not very knowledgeable in regard to their financial ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - August 22, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/aashish-shah" rel="tag" > Aashish Shah < /a > Tags: Education Medical school Practice Management Source Type: blogs
