The Trump administration has proposed that insurance plans providing drug coverage to Medicare beneficiaries will no longer be forced to cover six hitherto “protected” drug classes. The classes — which include drugs for psychiatric conditio…
Category: Policy
To do population health right, think about individuals
How do we change the way we think about taking care of patients, particularly when it comes to not the individual patient sitting in front of us, but a whole population of patients just like them (or somewhat like them)? In our practice, we have been s…
5 anomalies about compensation physicians should know about
The term “physician compensation” could be among the top phrases in health care this year. Though it’s always been a hot topic, it got hotter when the Trump administration announced a proposal that would affect nearly 40 percent of Medicare payments. T…
3 unexpected skills to reduce medical error
This article is sponsored by Careers by KevinMD.com. To err is human, and in the health care arena, avoiding errors is crucial. Efforts to address communication-related or “soft skill” failures have been ongoing since about 20 years ago when the Instit…
How religious exemptions will affect Medicaid managed care
In the United States, 25 million adult women are insured by their state Medicaid program. Medicaid covers 60 percent of all births in the United States as per federal law, and states must cover all pregnancy-related services for pregnant women with inc…
The demonization of socialized medicine
Of late, doctor/friends on social media have taken to reposting news articles detailing the horrors taking place in other nations because of the evil scourge known as socialized medicine. In fact, the two words, alone or together, just don’t carry anyt…
What the FDA forgets in the battle against e-cigarettes
How can we forget John Bender from The Breakfast Club? How can we forget his tousled wave of chestnut hair, cutoff lumberjack shirt, emanating cool with a cigarette perpetually in hand? In light of the 78 percent rise in e-cigarette use by high school …
Physicians have an obligation and an opportunity to reach out and speak out about guns
Many of us working in the “Gun Sense” field – that is, finding a middle ground position to advance firearm safety and reduce preventable injury in our patients – had an “a-ha” moment that led us to toil in these fields. Mine was on Nov. 2, 1981, when m…
Primary care today: There are several concerning trends
In 2006 Dr. Tom Bodenheimer wrote an article that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine entitled, “Primary Care – Will It Survive?” Dr. Bodenheimer spoke with great concern about patients’ growing unhappiness with their primary care phys…
Redefining quality through a patient-centered approach
Ask any physician what quality is, and you’ll get many different answers. You will hear answers such as “finding a cause for their pain,” “ruling out a life-threatening condition,” “partnering with patients to improve their health” or “offering the mos…
