Harvey Picker, who died Saturday at 92, was a wealthy industrialist who switched from running a leading medical supply company to serving as dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He later became a medical philanthropist and funded the development of survey methods widely used in America and Europe to gauge patient satisfaction.
Hospitals that participate in clinical trials appear to provide better care for patients with heart attacks or other acute heart events and have lower death rates than hospitals that do not participate in clinical trials, according to a new report.
Kimberly-Clark Health Care announced today a new educational campaign designed to educate healthcare workers and support their efforts to reduce the spread of Healthcare Associated Infections in U.S. hospitals. As part of the "Not on My Watch" campaign, Kimberly-Clark Health Care will launch a 30-city mobile tour, visiting 39 hospitals in eight months with its HAI Education Bus. The bus is a 45-foot-long, mobile classroom outfitted for interactive training, continuing education and continuing medical education courses on HAI management and prevention.
For physicians eligible to receive reimbursement for treating patients online, participating in online or e-mail consultations may be a straightforward decision. But what about practices that don't receive payer reimbursement for this work?
There are benefits to online consultations that may make them worthwhile even without payer approval. E-mailing patients can save time on minor cases, improve patient throughput, and allow physicians to focus on more complex, and often higher-reimbursing, cases. For some, this could lead to higher revenue even without payment specifically for online work.
And as competition heats up from retail clinics, concierge physicians, and other patient-centered providers, practices that don't offer online access may lose patients.
But physicians' time is a valuable commodity in today's healthcare marketplace. Physicians often receive payment for nonclinical activities such as administrative duties, so they may want credit for productivity associated with e-mailing patients, regardless of payer support.
Conceivably, a practice could compensate physicians for e-mailing patients by assigning productivity to those activities or grouping them with other administrative duties, says Peg L. Stone, CMPE, principal at PLS Professional Associates, LLC, a Cumming, GA-based firm that specializes in developing and evaluating physician compensation plans.. Alternatively, it could classify that time as a necessary marketing expense to promote the practice.
"The money will come from various sources, and it's probably less likely to come from the insurer than anywhere else," she says.
This story was adapted from one that first appeared in the March edition of Physician Compensation & Recruitment, a monthly publication by HealthLeaders Media.
A proposal to build a hospital on the University of South Florida campus has stalled, but has exposed tensions between the college and its primary teaching hospital, Tampa General. Leaders at the two institutions have different views on their relationship and their obligations to each other, so a national consulting group will help the two work on how their relationship should be structured. Tensions between the two, for example, contributed to the collapse of USF's anesthesiology training program for graduate medical students in 2006.
In the near future, medical malpractice insurance for obstetricians and gynecologists could become so expensive that only hospitals could afford coverage for birthings. Ob-gyns face sky-high medical malpractice premiums and the possibility of those rates doubling or tripling if they lose a major malpractice case. The trend has caused many of them to rethink their practice or leave the field.
More than two years after safety concerns curtailed use of the devices, the Food and Drug Administration has laid out new guidelines for the testing of drug-coated stents. The FDA said companies should be prepared to track patients for up to five years after their stents are approved to monitor blood clots, heart attack and other potentially fatal events. Previous studies showed that months after they are implanted, stent coatings can increase the risk of life-threatening blood clots unless patients continue to take anti-clotting drugs.
Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, has moved toward ousting the leaders of its West Coast affiliate. The power struggle could affect hundreds of thousands of California workers and the state's strained healthcare industry. The labor leaders have clashed over Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's failed healthcare plan and over bargaining tactics with hospitals, nursing homes and other employers.
Recent analyses suggest the meteoric rise of angioplasty during the past three decades has ended. Three major studies indicate that using the procedure to open blocked arteries to treat chest pain, or angina, may be riskier and no more beneficial than medication. The research also suggests angioplasty is used too often, and in many cases, the modest benefits don't justify the procedure's cost.
Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ironclad control over Iraq's health system has come under renewed scrutiny following recent clashes between his Mahdi Army militia and the Iraqi army. Iraq's hospitals and clinics have been at the center of some of the country's worst sectarian violence, although recent improvements in security have made Iraqis less afraid to seek medical attention. The turmoil in the health sector has severely damaged Iraq's ability to care for its sick.
