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Just in time to help you meet Medicare's June 30 deadline for starting to e-prescribe or face a 1% reduction in your 2012 payments, a newly updated guide to eprescribing is available with a plethora of useful information.

A bill introduced recently by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va, would require physicians and other healthcare providers seeking to obtain or renew a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration registration number to complete CME related to responsible opioid prescribing practices.

If one of your patients is treated in a hospital emergency department (ED), chances are you engage in very little communication or coordination of care with the doctors who provided the care. So says a new study conducted by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) for the nonprofit National Institute for Health Care Reform (NIHCR).

Since passage of the Affordable Care Act last year, you've probably been curious to find out what shape accountable care organizations (ACOs) will take and how they will affect your practice. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) answered some of those questions recently, and raised more.

If your billing systems are not compliant with new Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) standards by January 1, 2012, you will not get paid by Medicare. Even if you are compliant, you may still not get paid.

Appeals of denied insurance claims from you or your patients ?frequently? are successful, according to a government review.

You and many of your fellow physicians find many federal regulations to be burdensome, inconsistent and unnecessary. At least that?s what you told the American Medical Association (AMA) in a recent survey on the most onerous rules.

If a medical practice's staff is successful in the pursuit of happiness, does it really mean that practice will have happy patients as well? Experts disagree.

Consider your practice in terms of the basic economics of supply and demand.

Very few practices predict an ability to meet all 15 core criteria for eligibility to receive incentive payments through CMS.

Would you like to transform your waiting room from a place where patients wait for healing to a place where healing begins?

For whatever reason, the author says, many physicians appear to be afraid of the phone.

First impressions are lasting.

Commercial payers can be inconsistent with reimbursement processes, which can lead to a significant administrative burden for your practice.

Demonstrate benefits of EHRs to reluctant physicians.

On April 18, primary care practices around the country began attesting to meaningful use of an electronic health record system in hopes of earning $44,000 over five years from the CMS.

As a physician practicing family or internal medicine, you are more likely than your colleagues in other specialties to qualify for Medicare or Medicaid-related incentives for achieving meaningful use of electronic health records.

Learn about rollovers and penalties related to IRAs.

Unfunded mandates, lack of health insurance, standardization and too many incentive programs add costs and inefficiencies to physician practices.

Discover how to split IRA into smaller accounts.

Letters discuss working outside the box, modeling the behaviors you promote to patients, and pay-for-performance initiatives.

The author discusses building trust with new patients.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer wants residents who are obese and smokers to pay a $50 fee to enroll in the state's Medicaid program.

Understand what to look for in a license agreement with an electronic health record vendor.

Understand the rules regarding online services.

Smiling at and making eye contact with your patients could make them healthier.

Thirty-five percent of physicians reported receiving on-call compensation daily and 21% reported receiving an annual payment for on-call coverage in 2010.

Know what to ask when interviewing someone for tech support.