“Care Coordination” and “Value-Based Care” sound good, but leave it to DC and the managed-care cartels to turn innocuous sounding phrases into ideas that chiefly impose more top-down control and red tape instead of improving […]
“Differences in payment rates have unnecessarily shifted services away from the physician’s office to the higher paying hospital outpatient department,” admits CMS in the proposed 2019 rule for Medicare outpatient payment. CMS further reveals that payments […]
Proposed changes to rules governing how Medicare pays physicians in 2019 were released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) last month in a 1,472-page proposed rule known as CMS-1693-P. CMS says the proposal puts […]
An iPhone app consult with a nurse practitioner at the MinuteClinic will be your first stop for primary care if the CVS vision for the future of American medicine continues unabated. And managed care continues its takeover […]
Earlier this week we heard the good news that H.R. 365 was finally going to be considered by the House Committee on Ways and Means, bringing the use of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) for Direct […]
“The Direct Primary Care (DPC) model is burgeoning as patients yearn for quality time with their doctor at an affordable price,” writes Marilyn Singleton, MD, JD in a recent oped. But can the success of DPC help […]
Some of the worst features of ACA—the individual mandate penalty and Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB)—are being relegated to the trash heap of policy failures and states are working to open escape hatches to alternatives outside […]
Now that the ACA individual mandate penalty is about to be relegated to the trash heap of policy failures, additional reform is vitally needed to expand patients’ options for access to high-quality, lower-cost medical care. Opportunity knocks […]
Medicine is at a “critical inflection point,” write Victor Dzau and J. Michael McGinnis of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) and Mark McClellan of Duke University (JAMA 8/16/16). The NAM is launching a massive initiative on “Vital Directions for Health Care” at a Sep 26 meeting in Washington, D.C., (http://tinyurl.com/z4shr2b), bringing together more than 100 “trusted health and health care leaders” to “ensure nonpartisan, evidence-based analysis” in the context of the upcoming change in administration.
The latest fad, a “free” smartphone app called Pokémon GO, has reportedly exceeded even Twitter and pornography in popularity. One hospital has banned it for employees because they were glued to their screens instead of interacting with patients.
