Physicians News Health news for doctors and patients.

Information technologies such as interactive video conferencing and interactive modules on the World Wide Web are making CME more accessible and convenient. Take a look at the next generation of CME delivery.

Pennsylvania, known more for its tobacco crop than its tobacco use prevention programs, has been showing signs that it may be waking from its slumber on this issue.

Did you make a mistake by putting so much of your money into your retirement plan? Consider alternative scenarios to determine whether your plan is a prudent guarantee of cash flow upon retirement or an IRA for the IRS.

One of the key threshold issues any medical group must face is what kind of management is needed to make the practice successful. By having a good office manager and delegating managerial responsibilities, physicians can find relief from many of the aggravating day-to-day hassles.

Some of the more common areas of difficulty are: specific protections of buyer and seller, software license agreements and retirement packages. Consider some advice for negotiating each of these issues.

Expanding technical capabilities of vendors and users of health care information require serious legal considerations regarding the protection of electronically stored and retrieved information. A summary of Pennsylvania’s statutory and regulatory standards of confidentiality, as well as individual privacy laws.

The evolution of physician training and the resulting physician oversupply problem is laid out by Steven St. Peter, M.D. Solutions to this problem have sought reduction in international medical graduates and have even begun to pay hospitals not to train physicians. A rational approach must be taken, argues St. Peter, that does not leave the outcome to the vagaries of the free market.

How you can sell your appreciated stock portfolio (or any appreciated assets) and not surrender nearly one third of its value to the IRS in taxes.

Rapid development and disintegration of physician partnerships and changing alliances among physicians and institutions often fail to secure optimal cultural fit, or consider leadership succession, or anticipate ease of integration into a network. Three phases of organizational development are attentive to these problems: pre-deal, during the transaction and post-affiliation.

Patient care management can be made more cost-effective while affording a reasonable lifestyle for physicians and maintaining quality of care by adding a physician extender to the practice’s team. Consider the economic rationales, as well as licensure and reimbursement parameters.