Recent congressional testimony makes it clear: The government?s health IT initiative will stand or fall on the ability of small practices to adopt EHRs and demonstrate meaningful use. The problem is that small practices, where nearly 60% of office-based physicians work, face significant financial, administrative, and legal barriers to technology implementation. What is being done to solve the problem?
Project ECHO uses telemedicine technology and care-based learning, enabling specialists at the University of New Mexico Health Science Center in Albuquerque to partner with primary care clinicians in underserved areas to deliver specialty care to patients with chronic diseases.
People who are medically vulnerable who enroll in high-deductible health plans are at no more risk for cutting back on needed healthcare than other people who enroll in the plans.
Medicare patients in whom severe chronic illness was diagnosed in 2007 were less likely to die in a hospital than in 2003 and were more likely to receive hospice care, according to a new report.
Communication between hospital emergency departments and the doctors who provide the care is insufficient, according to new data.
Physicians seeking to become partners or shareholders in their medical practices frequently confront physician practice owners, employers, administrators, medical practice consultants, recruiters and brokers with the demand that "they want a position where they can have some control."
Important lessons in the life of a physician often come in a whisper. But one must have ears to hear.
A decade ago, a risk management consultant in Washington State predicted that "within the next few years all clinicians will be routinely using email as a communications tool in patient care."
When 34 very diverse primary care physicians join together into a single group, some differences of opinion and varying styles of practice are bound to occur.
How do you bill for a pharmacist's service in a patient-centered medical home?
The certificate of need process required to open a new medical facility has evolved into an arena where providers complete service-line dominance and market share, according to a new study.
Understand whether meaningful use and e-prescribing incentives are based only on Medicare Part B patients.
The Medicare Trustees Report released in May shows that Medicare will remain solvent longer than expected prior to passage of the Patient Protection and Affordability Care Act, but challenges remain for the long term.
Membership in the American Academy of Family Physicians has reached 100,300 physicians and medical students nationwide.
Jim Van Steen is one of those patients who comes along rarely in a doctor's career: an ordinary man who faced extraordinary challenges with wisdom and humor.
Learn how disability insurance market has evolved.
Letters discuss reimbursement, malpractice reform, and bureaucracy.
A bill introduced recently by Sen. Jay Rockefeller 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.
Determine whether it's a good idea to add an automated phone attendant to help front office staff.
The author describes letting go as his wife passed away, and how he picked up the pieces in the wake of her loss.
Learn whether to notify CMS if a partner leaves a practice.
Primary care practices are not currently required to participate in accountable care organizations, but pressure to join likely will increase because primary care physicians are central to the concept.
Appeals of denied insurance claims from you our your patients "frequently" are successful.
The author is graded and evaluated on the care I provide my patients with diabetes.
Years ago, pharmaceutical companies used to market directly to prescribing doctors, not on TV directly to patients, nor to insurance companies. Pharmaceutical sales representatives came to each doctor's office to discuss their products.
Time was when violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act got you little more than a warning letter from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Learn the ins and outs of long-term care insurance.
The continuing pressure on the primary care system will be significant if so-called RomneyCare in Massachusetts is a harbinger for national healthcare reform, as some critics have claimed. Read on to see how primary care physicians there have coped.
For more than a decade, Congress and physicians have agreed that the Sustainable Growth Rate isn't sustainable. Noted at a recent hearing, the 29.4% cut in reimbursement scheduled for January 1, 2012, would have a "disastrous effect on access to care for Medicare beneficiaries," which in turn may cause 82% of physicians to "make significant changes in their practices that will affect access to care."
Medical informatics, long in a gray area between information technology and medicine, may soon be recognized as a full-fledged medical subspecialty. If this occurs, it will arrive just as many healthcare organizations and physician practices are beginning to view health IT as an essential tool for improving the quality and lowering the cost of healthcare. Our experts explain the thinking behind this proposal.