Ken Terry

If we want more doctors to become geriatricians, raising the incomes and improving the working conditions of primary-care doctors is only a first step.

Patients believe that more care is better, that the latest and most expensive treatments are the best, that none of their doctors provide substandard care, and that evidence-based guidelines are a pretext for denying them the care they need and deserve

In the current economic environment, physicians across the country may soon be facing pressure - not only from Medicare, but also from commercial payers - to lower their incomes substantially.

Meeting meaningful-use requirements for EHRs will demand interoperability between data systems. Do you have a strategy for connecting online with pharmacies, labs, other physicians, and patients? Here’s our primer for achieving connectivity and meaningful use.

Sue Lowden, a Nevada Republican who’s running for the U.S. Senate, recently made headlines by proposing that the uninsured barter for healthcare with goods and services. In fact, barter is making a comeback throughout the country because people have less money to spend on everything, including healthcare, but there are a couple of problems with the proposal.

More and more nurse practitioners are getting doctor of nursing practice (DNP) degrees, rather than master’s-level certificates. In fact, this will be the standard degree for new NPs by 2015. The question is, should these newly minted NPs be called “doctor”?

The importance of primary care in restructuring our healthcare system is widely recognized. As a current article in Health Affairs points out, avoidable hospital admissions for asthma and diabetes complications in the U.S. are twice the average for advanced countries, and that isn’t because the United States has a greater prevalence of these conditions.

The low level of Medicaid payments to healthcare providers threatens to derail a big chunk of the reform law’s expansion of insurance coverage.

Electronic prescribing is well on its way to becoming mainstream, and new DEA regulations allowing electronic prescriptions of controlled substances should accelerate that movement.

Are you ready for computer-assisted coding (CAC)? So far, it’s being used mainly in hospital outpatient departments, emergency rooms, imaging centers, and ambulatory surgery centers. But it’s starting to move into inpatient settings and ambulatory-care clinics, as well. So you might soon be receiving solicitations from CAC vendors such as CodeRyte, A-Life Medical, AMI and 3M Healthcare Solutions. Whether or not your practice can benefit may depend on such factors as EHR adoption, the types of work you and your colleagues do, and whether you employ professional coders.

In Voltaire’s book “Candide,” he lampooned a contemporary philosopher’s assertion that “this is the best of all possible worlds.” Now a pair of emergency department physicians argue in a Slate article that we don’t need to reform our system of emergency care because most ED visits are necessary and, besides, they don’t cost that much.

Safety and quality checklists can save lives in hospitals, as a new British Medical Journal study reiterates. Yet only a fraction of U.S. hospitals are using the World Health Organization (WHO) surgical safety checklist, which was introduced here 15 months ago. And the Leapfrog Group, a public-private consortium that presses for quality improvement in hospitals, has found that a minority of hospitals adhere to nationally endorsed process measures that have been shown to reduce mortality.

Baffled by servers, networks, and other hardware? Turns out you don’t have to be a techie to make good decisions about your practice’s technology needs. Here’s how to gear up smart.

Major changes in the healthcare delivery system are coming, and they will affect every physician. The question is whether those changes will have the effect we all want or whether they will lead to unintended consequences that we don’t want.

The historic reform bill that Congress passed on Sunday will immediately affect physicians, but the impact will be much greater in the long term.

Many pundits have weighed in on the likely consequences of not passing healthcare reform, which is expected to come to a head within the next few days. But a recent blog post by Matthew Mintz, MD, an internist in Washington, DC, puts things in perspective for physicians.

The results of recent surveys suggest that a majority of physicians intend to buy electronic health record systems within the next few years. But software vendors interviewed at a recent annual meeting of health IT professionals aren’t yet seeing any stampede of doctors to acquire EHRs. And the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) has expressed reservations about the ability of physician groups to meet the “meaningful use” criteria for government financial incentives. That casts some doubt on the eagerness of doctors to adopt EHRs.

Small physician practices are less likely than big groups to have electronic medical records-and there’s a reason that goes beyond cost. They lack the resources and the technical knowledge to implement these complex systems. The support and training that vendors offer is frequently inadequate, especially for physicians who aren’t especially computer-savvy. And the vendors freely admit that they don’t have sufficient staff to cope with the expected influx of new EHR buyers who want to show meaningful use by 2011, when the government incentives start flowing.

Concerned about Medicare’s new Recovery Audit Contractors snooping around? Though your practice may not be affected by RACs for at least a year, the time to ready your defenses is now. Here’s how.

There’s good reason for physicians to be worried about Medicare’s new Recovery Audit Contractors, better known as “the RACs.” Like auditors for Medicare carriers, the RACs seek to recover money for the government by finding evidence of overpayments to hospitals and physicians. What makes these four private companies different from traditional auditors is that they’re being paid a percentage-9 to 12 percent-of whatever they recover from providers.

There’s good reason for physicians to be worried about Medicare’s new Recovery Audit Contractors, better known as “the RACs.” Like auditors for Medicare carriers, the RACs seek to recover money for the government by finding evidence of overpayments to hospitals and physicians.

One of the persistent problems in our healthcare system is the communication gap between inpatient and outpatient care.

The new Apple iPad is causing a stir in the medical world, even though no electronic medical record software has yet been designed specifically for it.

Confused about meaningful use and EHR certification? We’ve got the information you need to go confidently into the EHR marketplace. Here’s your guide.

Don’t give the government more of your hard-earned cash than you have to. With tax-filing season upon us, check out our tips for understanding tax laws and avoiding common mistakes.

Have you heard about that “free” electronic medical records system that your local hospital, vendor, or the government is offering? Sounds good, right? But be careful. While there are ways to get EMR software for little or no cost, there are still expenses (and sometimes other strings) attached.

Rumors of stricter enforcement of privacy and security rules have been heard before but this time there’s reason to believe that tougher scrutiny is indeed coming.

Hospital-doctor bundling schemes are a near-certainty in any healthcare reform. Will physicians get the short end of the stick?

Many practices in the market for an EHR have been leery of ASP models. But as Web connections get faster and the technology improves, more vendors are delivering acceptable results.

EHR companies are increasingly offering billing services, and vice versa. Is this just another way to squeeze money out of you, or does it make sense to combine the services?