September 30th, 2010 by RyanDuBosar in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion
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Government healthcare reform efforts are picking up the pace to roll out new reimbursement and practice models for primary care.
Medicare is giving out $10 billion for pilot projects encouraging new models of primary care, including the patient-centered medical home. New Jersey just passed legislation to explore the patient-centered medical home. Now, Massachusetts, the early adopter of mandatory health insurance, is now ambitiously planning how to take on the fee-for-service reimbursement system and moving toward accountable care organizations. Under discussion are the scope of power for state regulators, what rules will apply to accountable care organizations, and how to get rid of the existing fee-for-service system.
Blogger and pediatrician Jay Parkinson, MD, MPH, comments about the “bureaucrats in Washington” that, “they’ve decided for doctors that we’ll get paid for strictly office visits and procedures when, in fact, being a good doctor is much, much more about good communication and solid relationships than the maximum volume of patients you can see in a given day.”
Now, it’s those same bureaucrats who are changing the system, trying to find a model that will accomplish just those goals. (CMS Web site, NJ Today, Boston Globe, KevinMD)
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
September 29th, 2010 by Lucy Hornstein, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Health Tips, News, Opinion, Quackery Exposed, Research
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There’s been a movement afoot for several years now to quantify pain as the so-called “Fifth Vital Sign.” It all started as a well-intentioned effort to raise the level of awareness of inadequate pain control in many patients, but has gotten way out of hand. The problem is that the word “sign” has a specific meaning in medicine that, by definition, cannot be applied to pain.
When you hear us medicos talk about “signs and symptoms” of a disease, it turns out that they are not the same thing. “Symptoms” are things the patient experiences subjectively. “Signs” are things that can be observed objectively by another person.
Headache is a symptom; cough is a sign. Itching is a symptom; scratch marks over a blistery linear rash are a sign. Vertigo, the hallucination of movement, is a symptom; nystagmus, the eye twitching that goes with inner ear abnormalities that can cause vertigo, is a sign. If someone other than the patient can’t see, hear, palpate, percuss, or measure it, it’s a symptom. Anything that can be perceived by someone else is a sign. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Dinosaur*
September 29th, 2010 by Bryan Vartabedian, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion, True Stories
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I had lunch with a group of physicians recently, and along for the ride was a college student thinking of applying to medical school. When talking about the future, I suggested that the work of a physician 30 years from now will be hardly recognizable to today’s physician. Everybody disagreed and the student was confused. There was a lot of denial and myopic rationalization.
But I can’t blame them, really. Most of us see what’s immediately changing in our day-to-day work and the bigger picture gets lost. For most of us, the role of the physician is hard to see for anything other than it always has been. Most live and work as the self-determined independent care coordinator, reactively working to treat disease just as its been done for over a century. But change is happening around us. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*
September 29th, 2010 by Berci in Better Health Network, News, Research
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Forbes magazine came up with a few lists describing what will happen in the next 10 years in different areas. Medicine is one of these:
We asked our staff and contributors to forecast some of the noteworthy events of the next 10 years, a vision of the coming decade sketched from real data, projections and facts whenever possible — though we’ve injected a dose of rigorous science fiction to fill the gaps.
- 2012: Super-Tuberculosis
- 2013: DNA Sequencing Pays
- 2014: Big Pharma Implodes
- 2015: First autism drug
- 2016: First fatherless child using synthetic sperm
- 2017: U.S. life expectancy declines for first time in a century. Doctors blame 55% obesity rate.
- 2020: FDA approves autonomous robot surgery to remove tumors.
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
September 28th, 2010 by EvanFalchukJD in Announcements, Better Health Network, Health Policy, Health Tips, Opinion, Research
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I’m speaking [today] at the 23rd Annual Benefits Forum and Expo. This is one of the premier events in the health care benefits industry, and it’s a thrill for me to be the opening speaker on the “Health Care” track.
I’m presenting along with Charlie Salter, the VP of Benefits of ConAgra, one of our customers at Best Doctors. The talk Charlie and I will give is called “Real Results: When Individuals are in Control of their Health Care.”
As regular readers know, good things happen when people are in control of their care. They have a chance to make sure they’re not one of the 20 percent of people that end up with an incorrect diagnosis, or the more than 60 percent of people that end up with the wrong treatment. It’s the single most powerful thing you can do to make sure your health care experience is as good as it can possibly be. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*
