Emergency physicians are glorified secretaries with medical degrees
This article originally appeared in Emergency Medicine News.
Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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 - April 15, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/edwin-leap" rel="tag" > Edwin Leap, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Emergency Medicine Practice Management Source Type: blogs
The many benefits of self-rooming patients
In 2017, the flagship multispecialty practice of Oregon Medical Group, moved into its new digs — a 46,000 square foot redesigned medical office building. Practice leaders and the 30-odd clinicians in six different specialties were committed to a coordinated patient experience. They wanted to ensure that patients could move smoothly between sequential visits with different care providers — on the same day. To this end, the group invested in a centralized check-in process. However, the spacious physical plant was a significant obstacle to a smooth, efficient patient flow, even with centralized check-in.
I spoke w...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - April 7, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/diane-w-shannon" rel="tag" > Diane W. Shannon, MD, MPH < /a > Tags: Physician Practice Management Primary Care Source Type: blogs
M édecins sans Hôpitaux (Doctors without Hospitals)
This study and others seem to show that “small is beautiful” with independent physician led ACOs apparently out performing ACOs on average. (https://catalyst.nejm.org/do-independent-physician-led-acos-have-a-future/ )
Physician Outsourcers such as Team Health, MedNax, AMN are for profit health service companies. They are not traditional healthcare providers and yet they organize tens of thousands of physicians. Team Health has 20,000 affiliated physicians and provides physicians for hospitals and health systems in several specialties especially emergency medicine, anesthesiology and hospital medicine. MedNax is a physi...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 5, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
The Win-Win of Today ’s Telemedicine Technology for All Practices
The following is a guest blog post by Sean Brindley, Product Development Manager, Kareo Telemedicine
The healthcare profession has been talking about telemedicine and its potential benefits almost as long as there have been phones. Over the last five years, adoption of telemedicine programs has increased steadily, but for some practices, particularly smaller, independent offices, the questions loom larger. How disruptive will adopting telemedicine be to office workflow? Will telemedicine overburden office staff? What are the risks involved in trying it? How will they get reimbursed for the investment? And, most important, ...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - March 22, 2018 Category: Information Technology Authors: Guest Blogger Tags: Connected Health Digital Health Healthcare HealthCare IT Telemedicine Kareo Sean Brindley Telehealth Source Type: blogs
Incorporate side hustles to your primary care practice
Hustles are hustles, and side hustles add a little on the side. But if you want to maximize your income. You have to innovate.
When I started as an employed medical physician at the beginning of my career, I was overjoyed to make X. After years of watching money go out the door in medical school, and then making 0.25X in residency, I couldn’t believe that I was earning so much. As the dollars piled up, I listened a little too closely to the naysayers. They kept whispering that no one ever got bonuses. That Big Fancy Medical System never paid more than the basic salary.
A year later, bonus in hand, I cleared 2X. This was ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - March 15, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/docg" rel="tag" > DocG, MD < /a > Tags: Finance Practice Management Primary Care Source Type: blogs
We are a product of our upbringing: a tale of 2 cities
We are a product of our upbringing. For many of us, this means we develop values and beliefs about money and work from our parents. Our communities, however, also play a role. It is in these communities that we learn a joint value system, a blueprint for how to approach and interact with the world. It’s easy to underestimate the profundity of this effect.
I grew up in vastly different cities. One was wealthy, one not so much. One was tough and streetwise; one was business wise. One was textured, and varied. The other homogenous. Although I learned essential life skills from both these communities, my m...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - February 22, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/docg" rel="tag" > DocG, MD < /a > Tags: Finance Practice Management Source Type: blogs
Good To See The Medical Republic Doing Lots On Technology And Pointing To The Inevitable Future!
Last week we had the Medical Republic run two long articles of relevance to Digital Health.
First we had:
16 February 2018
Cloud patient management systems come of agePosted byMatthew Galetto Across our country, thousands of practices, including GPs, specialist and allied health, own and maintain a practice server. The practice server is the powerhouse of the clinic, the primary function of which is to host the clinical and practice management software.
Other critical functions include the hosting of a myriad of add-ons and plugins that connect to, and extract from, the practice management software.
As a secondary fun...
Source: Australian Health Information Technology - February 20, 2018 Category: Information Technology Authors: Dr David More MB PhD FACHI Source Type: blogs
Who ’s really to blame for physician burnout?
The subject of physician burnout has become a major point of contention in our community. Institutions try to help by implementing “mindfulness programs” or bringing in “burnout experts” for a one-time lecture. Physicians complain that the system is flawed and mindfulness is just another way for them to “blame the victim” for being burned out. Meanwhile, there are doctors who are simply trying to survive through each day; they walk around with a straight face, (and some with smiles), acting like all is well, while they secretly are suffering in silence. The shock comes when those doctors suddenly choose to take...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - February 9, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/maiysha-clairborne" rel="tag" > Maiysha Clairborne, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Practice Management Primary Care Source Type: blogs
Top 10 lies doctors tell themselves
Pamela Wible: Today I’m sitting here with Sydney Ashland, an expert in physician mental health, who has worked with doctors for decades helping them overcome negative thinking patterns. And we’re going to dive into the top 10 lies that physician’s tell themselves. The number one thing that I hear over and over again from doctors is, “I’m stuck in assembly line medicine.”
Sydney Ashland: Yes. I hear that all the time, too. I’ve worked with hundreds of physicians, and it doesn’t matter if they’re a general practitioner, if they’re a family medicine doctor, if they’re a specialist, they all believe th...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - January 16, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/pamela-wible" rel="tag" > Pamela Wible, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Practice Management Source Type: blogs
What physicians should know about Bitcoin but were afraid to ask
2017 has been the year of the cryptocurrency. Of course, the most famous is Bitcoin. It’s been all over the news recently, largely because its value has skyrocketed in a very short time. Since the focus of this blog has a lot to do with investing, particularly in alternative investments, I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least touch on the subject.
Now, making money from currency exchanges is nothing new. But with these new forms of technology, this exchange is happening at speeds never before seen, particularly because there is no government oversight. “What is cryptocurrency?” I hear you ask. Let’s break it down i...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - January 4, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/passive-income-md" rel="tag" > Passive Income, MD < /a > Tags: Finance Practice Management Source Type: blogs
How to create a household budget: a physician ’s simple approach
Learning to budget is scary. After all, it means you have to say NO to unnecessary purchases and keep your eye on long-term goals at the expense of short-term pleasure. There are a variety of ways to budget, ranging from the restrictive and somewhat impractical “envelope system” to the more vague and potentially ineffective “wing it” system. I’d like to present a balanced approach to budgeting that is practical, simple, and shouldn’t take any more than a few minutes to implement and monitor.
Step 1: Determine how fast you want to earn your freedom
This step is critical, because without it, you really have...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - December 24, 2017 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/live-free-md" rel="tag" > Live Free MD < /a > Tags: Finance Practice Management Source Type: blogs
Doctors should start watching more science fiction. Here ’s why.
I often say that electronic health records (EHRs) is like Skynet in the Terminator. I expect to turn around from my screen someday, and Arnold will lift me by my throat saying, “You haff not been doing yuh meaningful use.”
We practice in a time when EHR confounds us by freezing, crashing and chaining us continuously to our work, as we spend evenings and weekends on documentation. For reimbursement purposes, we are instructed to include more and more useless details. As we pay more attention to the “iPatient” than to the real patient, we have confused the map for the territory. Is there a Dr. John Connor out there w...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - December 12, 2017 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/seiji-yamada" rel="tag" > Seiji Yamada, MD, MPH < /a > Tags: Tech Health IT Hospital-Based Medicine Practice Management Primary Care 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
The challenges and rewards of being an introvert in medicine
More than two years ago, I wrote about some of the obstacles — as well as the opportunities — that introverted medical students face during training. Now that I have many rotations under my belt, it’s time for an update about my experiences on rotations, along with some helpful advice to newcomers.
The challenges
First, the challenges: Medical school rotations are very fast-paced, and our team members (co-workers and superiors) tend to change very frequently. This means that, for better or for worse, first impressions matter significantly, and there is sometimes very little opportunity to really get to know ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - November 15, 2017 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/nathaniel-fleming" rel="tag" > Nathaniel Fleming < /a > Tags: Education Medical school Practice Management Source Type: blogs
Lifting up women physicians makes us all better
As a male medical student, I have developed a growing interest in and enthusiasm for recent efforts to raise awareness about workforce gender disparities in medicine. Though women comprise over 45 percent of resident physicians and 50 percent of medical students in the United States, research reveals deficits in key surrogate measures of successful integration. There are pay and promotion gaps, and women are much less likely than male colleagues to hold major leadership roles or receive prestigious medical society recognition awards.Indeed, while U.S. medical schools finally achieved a 50/50 gender balance in 2016, women m...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - November 13, 2017 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/jim-eubanks" rel="tag" > Jim Eubanks < /a > Tags: Education Medical school Practice Management Public Health & Policy Source Type: blogs
