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Physicians Wary Of Healthcare Reform Models Intended To Save Primary Care

When I talk to internal medicine audiences around the country about the latest health policy flavor of the day – accountable care organizations (ACOs) – a typical reaction is skepticism trending toward cynicism. Many don’t quite get what ACOs are all about and certainly don’t want to be lectured about how they need to re-invent their practices. And they don’t buy the idea that ACOs will somehow save internal medicine primary care. The same can be said, perhaps to a lesser extent, about their reactions to PCMHs (Patient-Centered Medical Homes), P4P ( pay-for-performance), HIT (health information technology), MU (meaningful use), and the whole alphabet soup of other reforms being proposed to reform health care delivery and payment systems.

And who can blame them? Older internists have seen this all before, and the word has gone out from them to medical students and younger doctors not to trust policy prescriptions that promise to save primary care. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at The ACP Advocate Blog by Bob Doherty*

Are EMRs The Key To Improving Hand-Offs From The ER To The PCP?

Improving handoffs from the emergency room back to the primary care physician will require changing how electronic health records are used, better reimbursement to both the hospital and ambulatory doctors, and malpractice reform, according to a study. The rising use of hospitalists and larger primary care practice sizes has contributed to the difficulties faced when an ER doctors tries to reach a physician who best knows the patient.

Haphazard communication and poor coordination can undermine effective care, according to a new research conducted by the Center for Studying Health System Change. Researchers conducted 42 telephone interviews between April and October 2010 with 21 pairs of emergency department and primary care physicians, who were case-matched to hospitals so the perspective of both specialties working with the same hospital could be represented.

Among the findings in the report, telephone communication was essential in some cases, but particularly time-consuming. Both emergency and primary care physicians reported successful completion of each telephone call often required multiple pages and lengthy waits for callbacks. While placing and receiving telephone calls might seem straightforward and quick, providers said each small action multiplied across dozens of patients can become a daunting burden, with little immediate reward or reimbursement. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*

Medical Record Hacking: Can HIPAA Solve The Problem?

HealthNet either lost, or had stolen from it, computer hard drives with PHI of 1.9 million subscribers that had been in a California facility.  This latest HealthNet data security breach, which may have included names, Social Security numbers, addresses, health information and financial information comes a little over a year after a widely-reported data security breach by HealthNet in Connecticut which resulted in the first state Attorney General action under the HIPAA amendments contained in the HITECH Act. HealthNet is notifying affected individuals and is offering two years of no-cost credit monitoring and fraud resolution services, and credit restoration and identify theft insurance as needed.

It’s both surprising and unsurprising that this has happened again to HealthNet.  In these cases, and in recent cases in Massachusetts (Mass General Hospital HIPAA settlement) and Maryland (Cignet HIPAA violations and CMPs), we have seen examples, collectively, of individual sloppiness, of ineffective corporate policies and procedures, and possibly of gross neglect/fraud/incompetence.  The question arises: Is HIPAA the right instrument to address all three sorts of problems?  Since it seems that it is not having an effect on any of them, I would suggest that the answer is no. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at HealthBlawg :: David Harlow's Health Care Law Blog*

Newt Gingrich’s Take On Facebook Saving A Woman’s Life

I’ve seen at least half a dozen links to the op-ed coauthored by Newt Gingrich and neurosurgeon Kamal Thapar about how the doctor used information on Facebook to save a woman’s life. (It was published by AOL News. Really.)

In brief, a woman who had been to see a number of different health care providers without getting a clear diagnosis showed up in an emergency room, went into a coma and nearly died. She was saved by a doctor’s review of the detailed notes she kept about her symptoms, etc., which she posted on Facebook. The story is vague on the details, but apparently her son facilitated getting the doc access to her Facebook page, and the details posted there allowed him to diagnose and treat her condition. She recovered fully.

Newt and Dr. Thapar wax rhapsodic about how Facebook saved a life, and sing the praises of social media’s role in modern medicine. (I’m not sure how this really fits in with Newt’s stance on health reform, within his 12-step program to achieve the total replacement of the Left…but, hey, nobody has the patience these days for so many details anyway.)

Regular readers of HealthBlawg know that I would perhaps be the last to challenge the proposition that social media has a role to play in health care. However, I think Newt got it wrong here. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at HealthBlawg :: David Harlow's Health Care Law Blog*

Physicians, Technophobia, And Costly Communication Gaps

I was talking to a fellow physician about a mutual patient.  I had information  that would help him in their care and he was taking the unusual step of asking me for my information.  I was impressed.

“Could you fax me those documents?” he asked.  ”Here’s my fax number.”

I scrambled to get a pen to write down his number.  Then I had a thought: “I could email you those documents much easier.  Do you have an email address?”

Silence.

After a long pause, he hesitantly responded, “I would rather you just fax it.”  He said no more. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Distractible Mind*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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