Practice Management

Direct secure messaging (Direct), a standardized protocol for exchanging clinical messages and attachments, has not caught on significantly among physicians. Even advocates of the secure messaging system acknowledge it is still in an early stage of adoption, comparable to the first year of electronic prescribing.

Medical Economics is proud to unveil the second-place entry in our 2015 Physician Writing Contest. We believe the three winning essays exemplify what connecting with your patients is truly about, and demonstrate the levels of heart, determination, and empathy you strive to bring into every exam room, every day. Thanks for reading.

Saying no to a patient request can be a challenge. Physicians strive to maintain good relationships with patients, while not wanting to agree to anything not medically indicated. While this is certainly not a new problem, it is likely expanding due to inaccurate information on the Internet and direct-to-consumer advertising can increase patient requests for specific things.

Physicians today must understand a myriad of laws and regulations that govern not only how they practice medicine, but also how they bill and refer their patients for services both within and outside their own practice.

Your biggest risk and greatest exposure as a physician is in the area of professional services. But liability also can arise when it comes to the business side of a medical practice, however, and it is in this area where other types of coverage become highly important.

The push is on for physicians to embrace the concept of high-value care, providing patients with appropriate treatment while avoiding wasteful or unnecessary tests. But high-value care requires physicians to navigate many pitfalls, including lack of time to talk with patients and malpractice pressures.

It appears that the highly-anticipated repeal of Medicare’s Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula-also known as the “doc fix”-will have to wait at least a couple of weeks longer.

Fewer than half of physicians have met Stage 2 Meaningful Use requirements and, despite a promise to add flexibility to reporting requirements in 2015, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released a proposed rule for Stage 3 of the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record Incentive Program that some stakeholders say is anything but flexible.

According to comments made by Michael Chernew, PhD of the Harvard Medical School at the ACC meeting, the healthcare system must transform its payment methods. ACOs may be a solution to control spending.

The conclusion of a talk by Melanie Everitt, MD, Director Heart Transplantation, Children's Hospital Colorado is that medical therapy should be optimized first before moving on to treatment of children suffering from heart failure with a device or transplantation.

Despite recently published hypertension guidelines for those over the age of 60, it is still appropriate to focus on blood pressure targets set by an older guideline recommended by the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology.

Atrial fibrillation (AF), once thought of as a disease with a simple diagnosis, is now being seen as a disease of great complexity and now requires clinical judgement for effective managing.

Key market trends are placing pressure on healthcare providers to adapt new ways of delivering care more efficiently while improving patient outcomes. Cardiovascular care (and the importance of coordinating cardiovascular care) is critical because it comprises a significant portion of the overall healthcare spend, particularly in light of changing demographics.

For clinicians who aspire to leadership positions within their healthcare organization, keys to success include the ability to embrace ambiguity, not being afraid to fail, and falling in love with the problem and not the solution.

New guidelines on the treatment of cholesterol highlight four groups of people who will most likely benefit from statin therapy, and emphasize the need to tailor stain therapy to meet the individualized needs of each patient.

For patients with atrial fibrillation (AF), management may be both challenging and multimodal, and treatment with rate or rhythm control is all about quality of life and managing symptoms. Whether to opt for rate or rhythm control is based on patient specific factors, with patient preference a key factor shared by both treatment strategies.

As increasing numbers of physicians are called into leadership positions, new skills are needed to meet the many nonclinical demands required to fill these positions.

Hypertension is a major cause of morbidity and mortality, and the lifetime risk of developing hypertension is high. It is also widely known that treating hypertension reduces morbidity and mortality even in very old persons, and that an important aspect of blood pressure management is lifestyle modification.

Medical liability concerns still rate high on the list of concerns by cardiologists, despite State tort reforms in the past decade that have resulted in fewer claims made against physicians and subsequent decreased malpractice insurance pricing.

Cardiologists should get involved with social media and set the standard for the medical industry, said Kevin R. Campbell, MD, at the 2015 ACC conference.

Medical office furniture makes an important and lasting impression on patients. Now may be the right time to assess the condition of your furniture and see if an upgrade is necessary.

A study of 34 physician practices jointly sponsored by RAND Corporation and the American Medical Association found that alternative payment models are changing the way physicians and medical practices operate. However, changing the payment system doesn't always ensure patient care improves.

Physicians across the country are witnessing the advent of new payment models such as patient-centered medical homes, bundled payments, accountable care organizations, and other risk models. What do physicians need to know to incorporate-and succeed with-these payment models?

Follow these tips to help patients manage their sleep disorders, and ensure you are reimbursed correctly.

In the first-place winner for our 2015 Annual Physician Writing Contest, Daniel Taylor, DO describes his experience helping "Jeremy," a 15-year-old boy struggling with problems associated with obesity.

Many physicians doubt that electronic health records (EHRs) improve the quality of care. But relatively few practices are mining their EHR data to see how well they’re doing or to update their care delivery processes.

Observing other physicians’ struggles and having challenges of my own with the EHR compels me to consider ways to incorporate the computer into the patient-physician encounter in a manner that supports rather than detracts from the work that I love to do.

Electronic health records (EHR) use has steadily increased among office-based physicians since the passage of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, but new studies indicate that the number of physicians who don’t or plan to participate is substantial.

A fellow at the Brookings Institution Center for Technology Innovation writes that the market should drive down interoperability costs.

HHS’ announcement that, by the end of 2016, it aims to link 30% of Medicare reimbursements to the "quality of value" is the latest sign that, after years of talking about the importance of quality and outcomes in medicine, payers are getting serious about making them part of their reimbursement formulas.