Practice Management

Hospitals and primary care physicians (PCPs) may benefit from the growing numbers of PCPs employed in hospital-owned practices, but patients and third-party payers may be harmed by the trend, at least in the short term, according to a recent study.

The government?s new flexible bundled payment initiative allows practices to largely define their own terms of participation. But will the array of models resolve issues with undervaluing evaluation and management work and negotiating fair payment rates with hospitals? Find out how the definition of ?episodes of care? might make a difference.

The demand for ancillary services that combat the signs of aging has exploded with the aging of the American population.

If you look closely at the airline industry, there's much to learn from the leading airlines and steps they've taken to rebound from a point of weakness to a growing financial stability.

Is yours one of the many practices moving toward becoming a Patient-Centered Medical Home?

New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania had the highest costs of care in a recent study of how Medicaid volume of services and prices vary across states.

Is it worth it to consider earning extra income as a consultant?

Learn how to host shared medical visits.

Although physicians have not been early adopters of social media, their numbers online are increasing.

The median pay for administrators of small and medium-sized practices fell or barely increased last year.

Determine whether it's worth your investment to buy voice recognition software.

Letters discuss perseverance, obstacles for surgeons, family medicine, and insurance premium rates.

Physicians enrolling in Medicare in July had to answer a new question on their enrollment forms.

Tobacco use continues to be the leading cause of preventable morbidity and mortality in the United States.

A physician learns that a seemingly bad outcome or experience can be dignified if you take the steps to look past it and keep moving forward.

Determining whether it is legal to bill for services performed by noncredentialed physicians.

If you're like most primary care physicians, you think you should earn more for the 60, 70, and even 80 hours you work each week. The fact is, you can.

Every physician faces choices. Although the right choice for your practice may appear at first to be the least expensive option, in far too many cases, the option that starts out as the least expensive ends up costing you more either immediately, in the long run, or both.

Any doctor currently in practice appreciates all the new treatments that emerged in the 20th century.

About half of all office-based U.S. physicians were in practices employing so-called ?physician extenders,? with primary care physicians being more likely to work with them than medical specialists, according to a government report.

Physician practices are steadily adopting electronic health records (EHRs), according to recent reports, and primary care physicians are leading the pack. More than 40% of practices now use EHRs, with more than 2,200 already having attested to meaningful use. Who are they and how did they do it?

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services needs to make substantial changes in methodology and distribution before physician feedback reports can be considered meaningful, actionable, and reliable for individual physicians as well as groups, according to the Government Accounting Office (GAO). The reports indicate how practices are meeting criteria that will ultimately determine their Medicare reimbursement.

Family medicine practitioners have a lower probability of being sued for malpractice than most specialties but still have at least a 75% chance of facing a lawsuit before typical retirement age, according to a new study. The good news? More than three-quarters of all claims resulted in no payments.

Accountable care organizations (ACOs) can be financially rewarding for participating physician groups, but it may take longer than expected, if the results of the physician group practice demonstration apply. Read more to find out when the risks actually resulted in rewards.

Compensation in primary care practices edged up about 2.6% in 2010, a smaller increase than in the previous year but still slightly more than specialty practices, a recent survey found. Overall, however, the news was far from good?many practices were operating at a loss.