Melissa Brown, M.D.

Moving from evidence-based to value-based medicine 

Value assessment gives more complete information that includes quality-of-life metrics as judged by patients.

Bridges to Excellence enters New Jersey

The recent launch of a diabetes care incentive program may soon be followed by rewards for implementing a medical home.

Pamela Villarreal

Moving medical malpractice out of the courts

A liability by contract proposal to get medical malpractice out of the courts.

NJ's new hospital infection reporting law

New Jersey joins several other states in requiring hospitals to report infections, and may circumvent problems and limitations of those earlier efforts.

Wayne Lipton

Hybrid model for concierge medicine

The doctor spends a portion of each day delivering an annual comprehensive screening physical – the cornerstone of the program – and continues their traditional practice during the remainder of the day.

Premier launches expanded hospital quality initiative

New hospital quality incentive project expands beyond Medicare and looks at appropriateness of care, clinical outcomes, patient satisfaction, harm avoidance and efficiency.

 
Don May

Appraising CMS's new hospital reimbursement methodology

Historically significant changes to Medicare’s hospital reimbursement methodology, and their anticipated impacts.

New Jersey's road to RHIO development

Demonstrating value to physicians is key among the goals of creating a network to share electronic medical records.

Interim report on rationalizing NJ hospital resources

Evidence-based alternative to politicized decision-making about which hospitals deserve how much financial support from the state.

Internal medicine board adds practice improvement modules

Practice Improvement Module program modifies and enhances the American Board of Internal Medicine’s maintenance of certification program.

The Joint Commission's health literacy initiative

Joint Commission recommendations on how to: make effective communication an organizational priority to protect the safety of patients, address patients’ communication needs across the continuum of care, and pursue policy changes that promote improved practitioner-patient communication.

Horizon settlement benefits to New Jersey physicians

Health insurers will have to sit down in partnership with doctors, who are now going to be looking out for their business interests.

Free electronic prescribing available to all physicians

Every physician with an Internet connection can now use electronic prescribing at no charge.

Effects of medical error disclosure & apology

Research suggests that physicians should apologize, and that doing so does not increase malpractice costs.

Launching the 5 Million Lives Campaign

The campaign seeks to continue to save lives, raise awareness about the problem of variability in the quality of health care, and expand the national infrastructure for supporting hospitals in making improvements.

Parameters for Medicare pay-for-performance

Appraising which performance measures should be used and how they should be updated; which payment policy should be used to reward performance; and which key implementation issues need to be addressed, such as data and information technology requirements.

AHRQ offers prevention 
guidelines electronically

The federal government is making 110 recommendations covering 59 different preventive service topics even more useful and accessible.

Practicing patient-centered collaborative care

What physicians need to render “exactly the care that patients want exactly when and how they want and need it.”

Richard Popiel, M.D.

Horizon launches quality recognition programs

Physician and hospital programs offer both financial and non-financial rewards.

Turning physician stress into physician empowerment 

It is well recognized that medicine is a high stress profession. What is less well known is that chronic stress may be punctuated by episodes of terror, even acute stress reaction and post traumatic stress disorder when a mistake is discovered or a lawsuit ensues.

Hospitals collaborate to reduce diagnostic errors 

Efforts to define and identify pathology lab diagnostic testing errors, and to design and test interventions to reduce them.

Moving from evidence-based to value-based medicine 

Value assessment gives more complete information that includes quality-of-life metrics as judged by patients.

Internal medicine board adds practice improvement modules 

Practice Improvement Module program modifies and enhances the American Board of Internal Medicine’s maintenance of certification program.

Board certification offered in disaster medicine 

A description of the core competencies and testing process for this new board certification, which is available to all physician specialties.

The role of religion and spirituality in medical care 

The author of Medicine, Mind and Meaning discusses why, when and how physicians should incorporate spirituality into patient encounters.

IBM forming health information technology ventures

IBM health care technology experts discusses area’s promising expansion, obstacles impeding implementation, and innovation ventures with hospital systems.

Creating a practice in holistic medicine

Appraising different business models, treatment protocols, and benefits to patients and physicians.

Systems approach to health care quality improvement

Value Capture, co-founded by Paul O’Neill, seeks out health care organizations that are not content with a slow pace of quality improvement and error reduction.

Effects of medical error disclosure & apology

Research suggests that physicians should apologize, and that doing so does not increase malpractice costs.

Government addresses health care competition

Why the feds suggest abolishing Certificate of Need requirements, oppose collective bargaining by physicians, are skeptical that health insurers have monopsony power, and more.

James Martin, M.D.

Transforming family medicine on multiple fronts

Family Physician organization announces findings of reform project advocating far-reaching proposals.

Forming a national society for concierge physicians

President of new national organization explains conditions that make conversion to retainer-based medicine attractive or difficult, including legal and regulatory issues, and describes how the model fits in to the health care delivery spectrum.

John C. Nelson, M.D., M.P.H.

Physicians gain from new Medicare law

AMA’s president-elect outlines reimbursement changes and other implications of the new Medicare law.

John J. Skiendzielewski, M.D

New federal rule could degrade emergency care

Relaxed rules for on-call specialists could seriously increase burdens on emergency physicians and emergency patients.

The story behind tort reform success in Texas

TMA president narrates what it took to get malpractice caps signed into law.

Nancy Udell, Esq.

Advocating a new system of medical justice

Why the current tort system – and the typical remedies being debated – are inadequate compared to a new, alternative system to adjudicate medical malpractice cases.

Tort replacement solution to malpractice crisis

Penetrating analysis of causes contributing to Pa.’s malpractice crisis, and of possible solutions, and why tort reform is a misguided approach compared to a systems approach that removes the fixation on individual blame.

Rick Campanelli

Enforcing the patient privacy component of HIPAA

The director of the Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, tells what he will be looking for as he gears up for the  enforcement of  HIPAA.

Helping patients afford medications

Pittsburgh physician launches mail order program for prescription drugs that is available to anyone in the U.S. and offers considerable cost savings.

Joseph P. Rudolph, M.D.

Angelo S. Agro, M.D.

NJ passes physician joint negotiation law

New Jersey has become only the third state in the U.S. to pass a law granting antitrust exemption to private physicians who wish to negotiate jointly with health plans over fees and other contractual issues under state supervision. This version of the legislation may be the strongest yet for physicians wishing to garner bargaining clout through their numbers

Changing your practice situation

Many physicians are working longer hours for less pay and some may want to consider transitioning into another way of practicing medicine. Co-author of Medical Practice Divorce discusses legal, financial and personal considerations.

Joel M. Blau, CFP

Gregg S. Meyers, M.D.

Evidenced-based patient safety recommendation

Director of the Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety at the AHRQ discusses an analysis that the agency commissioned of evidence-based, best safety practices to disseminate to health care provider organizations, and advises that implementation criteria be sensitive to local priorities and resources.

IOM's call for systemic change in health care

Former AMA president outlines IOM’s latest report indicating that problems of health care quality persist in the U.S., that substantial improvement cannot come merely through harder work by health care providers, and that a systemic reorganization is needed in the way that various factors are integrated to improve health care.

Lonnie Bristow, M.D.

Robert A. Auclair, Esq.

Antitrust primer for physicians

Physician practices need to be concerned about how they're affected by antitrust and how their conduct can affect others. Any conduct that reduces or eliminates competition is generally prohibited under antitrust laws, and there are four problem areas for physicians: relationships with payors, IPAs, practice mergers and staff privileges.

Using medical information on the Internet

Executive vice president and editor-in-chief of Medicalogic/Medscape and former editor-in-chief of JAMA advises how physicians can maximize the Internet’s utility for patient encounters and speaks to the credibility of Internet--and print--medical journals

George D. Lundberg, M.D.

Ellison C. Pierce, Jr., M.D.

Improving anesthesia safety

Executive director of the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation describes how information dissemination and research grants have led to safer technological devices for anesthesia, better anesthesia drugs, expanded training in anesthesia residency programs and nursing schools, and a significant drop in anesthesia-related malpractice claims and insurance premiums

Improving pharmaceutical safety

President of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices describes a voluntary and confidential Medication Errors Reporting Program that has led hospitals to change protocols and drug companies to alter labels and take products off the market

Michael Cohen

John T. Kelly, M.D., Ph.D.

Working to improve Aetna's physician relations

Former AMA official John T. Kelly, M.D., Ph.D., plans to use the Internet to improve Aetna U.S. Healthcare's stormy relations with physicians.

Re-evaluating physician career paths

Expert in physician career assessment describes creative options for physicians who have become disenchanted with their present practice environments

Kent Bottles, M.D.

Linda Peeno, M.D

HMO medical director becomes critic

Linda Peeno, M.D., uses her experience as an HMO medical director to expose what she regards as deep systemic defects in managed care operations.

Shifting insurance from employers to individuals

AMA trustee outlines the AMA’s health reform plan and its impact on physicians and health insurers, as well as on cost, quality and access to health care.

William H. Mahood, M.D.

Robert L. Comis, M.D.

Competing for clinical trials funding

Clinical trials funding is seriously threatened. The head of the new Coalition of National Cancer Cooperative Groups discusses proactive ways to redress those threats, including looking to industry and the private sector for competitive bids.

AMA launches program for collective bargaining

The AMA’s president-elect discusses their alternative to physician unions.

Nancy W. Dickey, M.D.

Michael P. Hirsh, M.D., discusses the recent report, "Building Zero Tolerance for Violence Communities," addressing why physicians should regard violence as a medical problem, what roles they can play to intervene and what kind of data can be collected to study the problem.

Bill Cross describes how a software product capable of isolating clinical outcomes data down to the individual physician is part of a JCAHO-mandated trend of using outcomes measures for accreditation. A key issue is how such a system should be used by a hospital without unfairly threatening physicians whose "numbers don’t fit the curve."

Bernard Fisher, M.D., Scientific Director of the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project, assesses the process he went through when scientific misconduct charges were brought against him, and offers views on how to balance the integrity of medical research and with that of the researcher.

Abraham J. Twerski, M.D., internationally renowned expert on physician addiction and treatment, advises what to do for a colleague who may need help. Approaches to detection and treatment, privacy and medical licensure issues.