Physicians News Health news for doctors and patients.

How to weigh advantages and disadvantages of practice mergers. Specific traps to watch out for include ownership, governance, compensation, liability, fraud and abuse, reimbursement, taxation, benefits, antitrust and personnel.

Physician unionization has been in the spotlight during the past few months. Physicians may join or form a union, but must be mindful of the potential obstacles and barriers involved.

A representative risk pool funding scheme is portrayed, and freedoms and limitations of implied partnerships are discussed as they impact the sharing of profits and losse

Paul J. Fink, M.D., reflects upon the erosion of significance plaguing the medical profession, and its impact on medical education. Physicians must transcend feelings of powerlessness and guilt if they are to overcome that erosion.

Conventional wisdom can lead to costly decisions. What to do with your investment portfolios when the market is at its best and at its worst.

Specialists bear special burdens when health systems administer risk contracts: information risk, market share risk and financial risk. How specialists need to position themselves in anticipation of these burdens.

Federal Fraud and Abuse Control Program, revisions to current sanctions and to criminal law, civil monetary penalties and amendment to the anti-kickback statute.

Key features of Office of Inspector General audits, including OIG’s new voluntary audits. Offers interpretations of: physical presence of teaching physician, documentation, undercoding and penalties.

Physician unions will erode physicians' greatest asset: the relationship they have with their patients, argues James Unland, acting executive director of Millennium Physician Organization.

Watershed progress in curbing tobacco sales to minors in Philadelphia.