This Week’s Presidential Healthcare Summit: Is It About Money or Satisfaction?

Mike Magee Today is the Healthcare Summit in Washington. There will be a great deal of discussion about efficiency, effectiveness and holding down the cost of health care. Money and time spent were also the topic of a JAMA article this week focused on declining physician work hours in concert with declining physician reimbursement over […]

The Physician as Grim Reaper – The Ultimate Oxymoron

Confusing lethal injection with the practice of medicine is a fatal error I can’t understand the logic of state governments, on one hand, insisting that only physicians oversee lethal injection while, on the other hand, actively expanding scopes of practice for non-physician professionals. Does the government believe that it takes eight years of medical training to […]

More On Physician Reimbursement, CMS, and the AMA’s RVS Update Committee (RUC)

An opinion on how the sole-source relationship between CMS and the AMA’s RUC threatens Medicare’s pilot on medical homes (Note: At Health Care Renewal, Dr. Roy Poses, a Clinical Associate Professor at Brown University’s School of Medicine, writes a consistently excellent blog on health care financial conflict . Both he and I have written extensively […]

Do you know a Great Doctor?

If so, that’s great news. But do you also know how to FIND a Great Doctor?If you’re in need of a primary care provider or a specialist, where do find the greatest doctors? Visit Google, enter “How to find a great doctor” and you’ll find 125,000,000 results. Where do you begin the search? Sure, you […]

A Medical “Peace Corps�? Comes to New York State

Is Gov. Spitzer’s program the solution for New York’s looming physician-supply crisis?New York state has been in a medical crisis and Albany is just becoming aware of the issues. Despite years of warnings about looming physician shortages coming from county and state medical societies, New York legislators turned a blind eye. In their defense, constituents […]

Can Leavitt Explain Medicare Physician Data Schizophrenia at HHS?

Its time to demand accountability and an alignment of words and actions at HHSRegular readers will know that, last Sunday, I posted a column that pointed to HHS’ schizophrenic behavior when it comes to the release of Medicare physician data. First they fight the consumer advocacy group Checkbook.org’s lawsuit demanding the release of data in […]

What’s HHS’ Real Position on Releasing Medicare Physician Data?

A New HHS Program Gives “Cognitive Dissonance” New Meaning Here’s a really classical example of a federal regulatory agency holding fast to two opposing ideas at the same time. I wonder what it means? Last week HHS posted an interesting notice announcing a new program that recognizes 14 (presumably) forward-thinking health care coalitions of providers, […]

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