I am a terrible coder. I think I am a pretty good doctor, but when it comes to coding, the process of figuring out which billing code to pick to assign to a bill for an office visit, I am hopeless. No matter how many times I have had the rules explained to me, or […]
“Better patient care” is the reason hospital and health systems usually give when they merge or acquire one another. Our research suggests that mergers and affiliations might, paradoxically, increase the risk of harm to patients in the short run. Improving the safety of patient care is possible during mergers and affiliations, but requires intentional efforts. […]
It’s easy to get excited about technological advances such as nanobots that swim in blood to deliver drugs or 3-D printers that print human tissues. However, in our enthusiasm to find the next fix, we are failing to notice the ground slipping underneath the health care industry. Here are four trends that are changing health […]
Health care is buzzing as Atul Gawande has been selected as CEO of the Berkshire-Hathaway/Amazon/JP Morgan strategic venture. I was thrilled they picked a physician, like myself, in the trenches to run their gig. After hearing the news, I remembered Gawande’s TED Talk from 2012 and decided to catch up on it during my flight to the Healthcare […]
The health care system has never been so complex as it is today. As doctors, we’ve seen the struggles that happen just trying to help patients get the medical care they need. Patients are now ladened with high deductibles and often are the victims of baseless denied coverage for diagnostic tests and medication. Insurance companies […]
As more doctor pay is being tied to patient satisfaction and “outcomes,” a recent Forbes article argues that “It’s only a matter of time before physicians will see the bulk of their compensation tied to quality measures.” To prepare for this pay-for-performance apocalypse, the article cites Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) CEO Haylee Fischer-Wright, MD, […]
I remember visiting my pediatrician as a child, and even at a young age I was in awe of his degrees hanging on the wall. Looking back, I think I may have looked like the kid in Norman Rockwell’s Doctor with my behind in the air waiting to get a vaccination while staring in fascination […]
In the recent weeks we’ve seen frequent headlines alerting people around the country to dangerous heat waves. Physicians and nurses see these headlines and the human results of the heatwaves in the form of heat illness, people burdened with lung ailments and suffering from deteriorating air quality, and a range of individual harms brought on […]
Medical school was a difficult adjustment for me. Coming from a blue-collar background and lacking a medical pedigree, I did not relate to most of my classmates, and I made very few friends. That changed when I met J., a second-generation physician-to-be without the competitive guile or sense of entitlement implicit in most of the […]
A recent stir was created regarding a California pediatrician Dr. Bob Sears. Dr. Sears is sympathetic to parents who do not want their children vaccinated. Apparently, Dr. Sears got in trouble with the California State Medical Board for not producing medical records to support a parent’s claim that their son could not take vaccines because […]
