October 11th, 2011 by Berci in Opinion
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This is one of the best pictures I’ve ever seen. I’m almost totally a left brain… What about you?
Left brain: I am the left brain. I am a scientist. A mathematician. I love the familiar. I categorize. I am accurate. Linear. Analytical. Strategic. I am practical. Always in control. A master of words and language. Realistic. I calculate equations and play with numbers. I am order. I am logic. I know exactly who I am.
Right brain: I am the right brain. I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion. Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter. I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feat. I am movement. Vivid colors. I am the urge to paint on an empty canvas. I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel. I am everything I wanted to be.
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
October 11th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in News, Research
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Hospitalists in adult medicine reported an increase in median compensation from $215,000 to $220,619 in 2010, while pediatric hospitalists median compensation rose from $160,038 in 2009 to $171,617 in 2010. Though hospitalists earned more in 2010, they also reported higher productivity. The annual median adult hospitalist physician work relative value unit (wRVU) rate was 4,166, a 1.4% increase over last year.
According to the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) and Society of Hospital Medicine’s (SHM’s) State of Hospital Medicine: 2011 Report Based on 2010 Data, compensation varied by how it was structured. Adult hospitalists with 50% base salary or less reported median compensation of $288,154, while adult hospitalists with 51-70% base salary reported median compensation of $249,250. Adult hospitalists who reported 71-90% base salary earned Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*
October 10th, 2011 by Happy Hospitalist in Humor
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The airline industry was a lot like physician practices several years ago. Costs were rising all around them while stagnant revenue caused declining margins. Well, this is America, not North Korea. How did the airline industry survive and thrive (except for American Airlines)?
- Efficiency
- Add on revenue opportunities
Physician offices are just now catching on. What can doctors learn from the airline industry? Here’s picture proof of efficiency in action.
Text from Sister Happy: Here’s how I just checked in at my orthopedists…it’s all by kiosk now. Have to say…they were faster and nicer than many receptionists. Only problem is… Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist*
October 10th, 2011 by DavidHarlow in Health Policy, News
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On September 14, HHS released for comment draft lab results regulations that will, if finalized, effectively bathe the Achilles’ heel of health data in the River Styx of ¡data liberación! All lab results will be made available to patients, just like all other health data. (See the HHS presser and YouTube video from the recent consumer health summit. Todd Park, HHS CTO, is also the chief activist for what he calls ¡data liberación!)
Forgive me for mixing my metaphors (or whatever it is I just did), but even though there are just a couple dozen words of regulations at issue here, this is a big deal.
When HIPAA established a federal right for each individual to obtain a copy of his or her health records, in paper or electronic format, there were a couple of types of records called out as specifically exempt from this general rule of data liberation, in the HIPAA Privacy Rule, 45 CFR § 164.524(a)(1): psychotherapy notes, information compiled for use in an administrative or court proceeding, and lab results from what is known as a CLIA lab or a CLIA-exempt lab (including “reference labs,” as in your specimens get referred there by the lab that collects them, or freestanding labs that a patient may be referred to for a test; these are not the labs that are in-house at many doctors’ offices, hospitals and other health care facilities — the in-house labs are part of the “parent” provider organization and their results are part of the parents’ health records already subject to HIPAA).
(“CLIA” stands for the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988, which established quality standards for certain laboratory testing.)
This carveout of lab results from patient-accessible records has long been a thorn in the side of the e-patient. This month, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at HealthBlawg :: David Harlow's Health Care Law Blog*
October 10th, 2011 by Steve Novella, M.D. in Opinion, Research
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While we frequently on SBM target the worst abuses of science in medicine, it’s important to recognize that doing rigorous science is complex and mainstream scientists often fall short of the ideal. In fact, one of the advantages of exploring pseudoscience in medicine is developing a sensitive detector for errors in logic, method, and analysis. Many of the errors we point out in so-called “alternative” medicine also crop up elsewhere in medicine – although usually to a much less degree.
It is not uncommon, for example, for a paper to fail to adjust for multiple analysis – if you compare many variables you have to take that into consideration when doing the statistical analysis, otherwise the probability of a chance correlation will be increased.
I discussed just last week on NeuroLogica the misapplication of meta-analysis – in this case to the question of whether or not CCSVI correlates with multiple sclerosis. I find this very common in the literature, essentially a failure to Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
