This is what a successful direct primary care practice looks like
I recently attended (and spoke at) the Concierge Medicine Assembly in Atlanta. My role was to give the perspective of a “successful” direct primary care (DPC) practice. This being the second such conference in three weeks, I’ve learned that my panel of 600+ patients and survival for two and a half years puts me in the higher ranks of solo DPC practices. The Atlanta conference was actually a combination conference, catering to both the more recent “direct care” style of practices like mine, and the more traditional “concierge” practices, with their higher fees and smaller pa...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - August 10, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Rob Lamberts, MD Tags: Physician Primary care Source Type: blogs
Inside Baseball: The DoD EHR
By MARGALIT GUR-ARIE
The health information technology (HIT) world has been hit by a watershed event like no other. The Department of Defense (DoD), widely respected for its indiscriminate generosity to contractors, has awarded the most coveted prize in recent HIT memory – the Defense Healthcare Management Systems Modernization (DHMSM) contract.
And the winner is… Leidos, the contractor formerly known as SAIC. A couple of years ago, when the race for the DoD contract began, Leidos/SAIC selected Cerner as its EHR of choice for this contract. The smart money though was on Epic and its Big Blue partner because they ar...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 6, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Tech Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
The Impending Revolution
By DR. ROB LAMBERTS
This weekend I attended (and spoke at) the Concierge Medicine Assembly in Atlanta. My role was to give the perspective of a “successful” DPC practice. This being the second such conference in three weeks, I’ve learned that my panel of 600+ patients and survival for two and a half years puts me in the higher ranks of solo DPC practices. The Atlanta conference was actually a combination conference, catering to both the more recent “direct care” style of practices like mine, and the more traditional “concierge” practices, with their higher fees and smaller...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 3, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: suchandan roy Tags: THCB Dr. Rob Lamberts Source Type: blogs
The Operating System For Value-Based care
Conclusions
In order to support the sea change occurring in medicine – moving from fee-for-service to value-based care – the technology platform must also be re-invented. Institution-centered technology, which is the soil where current EHRs have grown, will no longer work. No matter how much effort is put into connecting data silos with record locater services and lowered technology barriers between them – dubbed “interoperability” in current lingo – the solution will not be sufficient. A universal data platform is needed, where patients and care teams can see their information and use it in meaningful ways.
Th...
Source: The Health Care Blog - July 20, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: suchandan roy Tags: THCB The Business of Health Care Robert Rowley value-based care Source Type: blogs
How doctors celebrate Independence Day: They don’t
It’s July 4th! All across the country, Americans are celebrating freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Families and friends are relishing potato salad, apple pie, barbecues and parades.
Is your doctor decked out in red, white, and blue enjoying fireworks from his yacht? Probably not.
Have you seen any medical students waving little flags? Unlikely.
The truth is American medicine has little to do with liberation or independence. July 4th is just another day of captivity and confinement for most American doctors — and nearly all medical students.
Once upon a time all doctors were independent — until r...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - July 4, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Pamela Wible, MD Tags: Physician Primary care Source Type: blogs
How Might Crushes Right In Healthcare
By RICHARD GUNDERMAN, MD
Dr. Melos is a gastroenterologist in solo practice in a medium-sized Midwestern city. One day she hears a knock on her door. When she answers, she finds two representatives of Athenian Health System, who request a few minutes of her time. She invites them to take a seat in her office.
After exchanging pleasantries, the visitors get down to business. They extend Dr. Melos an offer to join the ranks of Athenian’s employed physicians. If she declines, they say, they will hire their own gastroenterologist, whose practice will grow rapidly on referrals from their large network.
The represe...
Source: The Health Care Blog - June 29, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: THCB Conslidation Gunderman Physician practice Source Type: blogs
A Powerful Tool For ICD9-ICD10 Conversion
By PAT SALBER SPONSORED CONTENT
Prior to attending medical school, Parth Desai took a gap year to help his mom manage his dad’s small internal medicine practice. She was worried about how she was going to handle the looming transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10. Parth said he would help her out.
He looked at different consultants and programs, but they were all too complicated, too expensive, or both. He also looked at a number of different ICD-10 training programs, but didn’t really find anything that he thought was that good. He wanted help with code conversions...
Source: The Health Care Blog - June 19, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Small Practice THCB Source Type: blogs
Complete independence for a small practice today is unwise
Momentum remains in favor the flow of physicians to employed positions. Is this wisest path for physicians? That is unknown and likely depends upon the particular circumstance. Either way, independent physicians are an increasingly shrinking, yet curiously heterogeneous group. Independent practices vary in size, composition and philosophy. The impact of size (from solo to very large) and composition (primary or specialty care, single or multispecialty and physician demographics) is relatively straightforward, but the consequence of the practice philosophy may be a less obvious and more critical. Practices that wish to rema...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - June 13, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Simon Prince, DO, MBA Tags: Physician Primary care Source Type: blogs
3 changes that can improve maintenance of certification
Physicians are struggling to adapt to a sea change in the health care delivery system. Solo physician practices are disappearing, small group practices are merging to become larger, and large group practices are being acquired by hospitals and integrated delivery systems. All of this is occurring in a milieu of decreased fee-for-service reimbursement from government and private insurers, bundled payments and pay for performance, increased levels of student loan debt, pressure to increase productivity (five patients per hour instead of just four), an increasingly difficult regulatory environment, frustration with electronic...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - May 21, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: David Troxel, MD Tags: Physician Primary care Source Type: blogs
3 changes that can improve maintenance of certifcation
Physicians are struggling to adapt to a sea change in the health care delivery system. Solo physician practices are disappearing, small group practices are merging to become larger, and large group practices are being acquired by hospitals and integrated delivery systems. All of this is occurring in a milieu of decreased fee-for-service reimbursement from government and private insurers, bundled payments and pay for performance, increased levels of student loan debt, pressure to increase productivity (five patients per hour instead of just four), an increasingly difficult regulatory environment, frustration with electronic...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - May 21, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: David Troxel, MD Tags: Physician Primary care Source Type: blogs
Is starting a private practice a dying art?
Going into my final few months of residency, I am somewhat puzzled knowing that so many of my colleagues are signing contracts with hospital-owned outpatient practices or are going into subspecialist fellowship training or have plans to work as a hospitalist. As someone who plans to go into solo private practice, I feel like an outlier.
Continue reading ...
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 - May 3, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Eddie Fatakhov, MD, MBA Tags: Physician Hospitalist Primary care Source Type: blogs
How can independent physicians survive the new health care climate?
Life is tough for physicians in solo and small group practice. The federally mandated introduction this fall of ICD-10 requires physicians and their staffs to learn a new system of coding diseases. “Meaningful use,” another federal program, requires physicians to install and use electronic health records systems, which are complex and expensive. And PQRS, the Physician Quality Reporting System, is beginning to penalize physicians for failing to report individual data for up to 110 quality measures, such as patient immunizations, each of which takes time to collect and record.
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You...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - April 22, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Richard Gunderman, MD, PhD and Matt Alban, MD Tags: Policy Primary care Source Type: blogs
Nickson Would be Celebrating Life if it Weren’t for Vaccines
Conclusion
Parents need to be able to choose what goes into their child’s body, especially when their babies are not born full-term or have any underlying health problems at birth. When a product such as a vaccine is injected into a child, known to be associated with severe risks, including death, there should be a standard protocol in place for these families to get needed support when the risks outweigh the benefits. No one can predict how a vaccine will negatively affect a person.
Lindsey and other families going through this, suffering the loss of a child likely caused by the vaccine(s) given to them, when no other p...
Source: vactruth.com - April 9, 2015 Category: Allergy & Immunology Authors: Augustina Ursino Tags: Augustina Ursino Human Top Stories National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) vaccine court Vaccine Death VAERS Source Type: blogs
CBI's Sixth Annual Transparency Reporting West, April 21-22 in San Diego, CA
Learn new strategies to streamline Open Payments reporting and leverage data analytics to improve risk management and commercial strategy at this year's Transparency Reporting West conference, being held April 21-22 in San Diego, California.
The conference offers an impressive array of speakers, including compliance leaders and healthcare attorneys. Doug Brown of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is featured as the virtual keynote speaker.
**Policy and Medicine readers enjoy a discount of $300 off their registration fee, by including the Code "TWPOL3" into the Promo Code field on the Registration ...
Source: Policy and Medicine - April 1, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs
The Angel of Death
There is plenty of vapid speculation going on about the possible motives of Andreas Lubitz. Lots of people are depressed, and people sometimes kill themselves, but it's obviously uncommon to take a lot of other people along for the suicide ride. Not, however, unprecedented. These researchers found 24 cases of "aircraft assisted suicide" in the U.S. from 1993 to 2012. Most of them were private planes and probably were solo ventures; however the story recounts 4 cases of commercial airline pilots deliberately crashing planes and killing passengers. In no, case, however, did they leave behind an explanation. (One pilot surviv...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 30, 2015 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
