January 4th, 2012 by Iltifat Husain, M.D. in News
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The start of January has some exciting new technologies on the horizon. Recently, Wahoo Fitness announced their new product, BlueHR — a fitness heart rate monitor — can sync to your iPhone 4s via bluetooth and without the need for addition adaptors.
All users have to do with the BlueHR device is to strap it around their sternum, and they will be able to monitor stats such as their heart rate and the number of calories they are burning via their smartphone. It currently uses Bluetooth 4.0 technology, and as such, the only smartphone that currently has that capability is the iPhone 4S.
We wrote an in-depth article about Bluetooth 4.0 when the iPhone 4s was released, commenting on how it could be a boom for mobile health devices due to the following features of the protocol: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*
December 28th, 2011 by Happy Hospitalist in Health Policy, Research
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For centuries, physician practices have been small business enterprises built on the sweat equity of intensive medical training. It was an economic reward system that often had physicians sacrificing family life for patient care. It continues today as the foundation of fee for service. We know it as the eat what you kill model of health care.
In the last ten years, physician practices have seen a dramatic shift from independent business practices to hospital owned practices. With that shift has come a titanic move toward the salary vs productivity compensation model.
Is this a good thing? Is a salaried physician better than a productivity based physician? That question can’t be answered because good depends on which part of the medical industrial complex you belong to and what you consider good.
As a physician, the answer on whether to become a salaried vs productivity based physician can only be answered after one defines what they value most. We know, across the board, that physicians who work in a 100% productivity model earn Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist*
November 4th, 2011 by Happy Hospitalist in Research
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Want to know if your hospitalist compensation package is on par with other hospitalist groups around you? I have previously written about the results of the hospitalist salary compensation survey for 2010, 2011 (SHM and MGMA). The parabolic rise appears to have no end in site. Hospitalist demand continues to grow as witnessed by the rapid expansion of hospitalist subsidy/support payment for 2011, despite poor economic conditions.
Here’s another look at an exceptional 2011 Hospitalist Salary Survey done by the folks at Today’s Hospitalist. If you are a hospitalist, you owe it to yourself to stay well informed about what you are worth in the market place. As shown in the SHM/MGMA survey, hospitalist compensation Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist*
October 17th, 2011 by Happy Hospitalist in Opinion, Research
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How many patients should a hospitalist average on any given day? What do you think? The Hospitalist asked that question to hospitalists and 421 of them responded. They were given responses in quintiles of 10 or fewer, 11-15, 16-20, 21-25, and more than 25 total patient encounters per day.
Go check out their results. I’m not surprised. But, as they say, there is no right answer. The right number is the number that brings WIN-WIN-WIN-WIN to the patient-doctor-hospital-insurance quadrangle. WIN-WIN-WIN-WIN is possible. It just takes a great understanding of removing the barriers to efficiency. Efficiency and quality of care can move in the same direction. They don’t have to be opposing forces. You can be better and faster if given the tools, whether those tools are driven by IT support, systems process changes, communication enhancement, physical and structural hospital layout changes or documentation support tools. There are many others. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist*
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*
