Whenever I speak about social media to doctors across the country, I often get asked, “How do I deal with a negative online review?”
Here’s one way not to handle it: sue the patient writing the review.
There’s a well publicized case in Minnesota, where a resident posted a screenshot of …
Dealing with a negative online review on a physician rating site
by Jeffrey L. Cohen
The current fixation on Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) is causing an enormous amount of two things: 1) talking, and 2) inactivity.
Yes, the concept of delivering care in a manner that reduces or at least controls costs is important and interesting. Yet, the marketplace is replete with people and businesses that have adopted …
Physician responsibility and leadership is critical for ACO implementation
Medicare is thinking of using patient satisfaction scores in part to determine bonuses to hospitals.
According to Kaiser Health News,
… patient gripes soon will affect how much hospitals get paid by Medicare.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is finalizing details for the new reimbursement method, required by last year’s health care law. Consumer advocates say tying patient …
Patient satisfaction should not influence how doctors are paid
Every morning at 5:30 AM, I am at my computer scouring the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and other news sources for articles about health care and wellness.
These articles are then summarized in 140 characters with a link to the original article and tweeted. As of today there are 3700 followers of my informal aggregated health care news service, and I hear about it if …
How Twitter changed the life of this physician executive consultant
A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.com.
by John Tooker, MD, MBA, MACP
There are over 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States — about 3.7% of the U.S. population — according to a 2011 report from the Pew Hispanic Center.
Although there are many reasons why immigrants elect to come …
ACP: National immigration policy and health care
Pharmaceuticals are amazing stuff. You can bitch and moan about their costs, side effects, or the number of them you’re taking, but what they’ve done to extend life and improve its quality is truly remarkable.
And for all the bad raps they get, I salute the pharmaceutical industry, and those who work anonymously in labs around the world, to bring us these miracles.
But …
The trend from drugs of value to medications of convenience
I didn’t expect to bump into “Max” on the streets.
“I was kicked out of the house by my wife,” he sighed. Max shifted around on his feet, eyes puffy and cheeks pink.
“Did you start using again?” I asked.
Max looked down and didn’t say anything. In the three years I had known Max, an alcoholic and former drug user, he had been clean. But recently he had started struggling. He lost his …
How a model of multidisciplinary team based care may save primary care
In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Barbara Levy, Chairwoman of the Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC), commented on the American Medical Association’s (AMA’s) decision to have minimal primary care participation on the RUC, saying the committee is an “expert panel” and not meant to be representative.
Since the committee is made up of 27 specialists, one …
A simpler coding system proposal with a focus on primary care
Kimberly Hiatt was a pediatric critical care nurse who accidentally gave an infant a fatal overdose of calcium chloride last year.
By accounts, it was a calculation error. A human mistake.
After the incident, the hospital fired her.
This past April, she took her own life.
Although it cannot be concluded that the tragedy was directly responsible for her suicide, the incident clearly …
Should nurses be fired for fatal medication errors?
by Katherine O’Brien
Cancer patients usually say they want a cure. Well, of course, that goes without saying. But it’s also kind of annoying.
We’ve all, as children and adults, had those “What if” conversations. What if you could have anything you wanted in the whole world? Depending on the respondents’ ages, people might say anything from “a …
Cancer is a crime, and how a tumor board is the courtroom
An excerpt from This Won’t Hurt A Bit (and other white lies): My Education in Medicine and Motherhood. Copyright © 2011 by Michelle Au. Published by Grand Central Publishing.
Let’s look at this first purely from the perspective of personal investment and expectation. To practice …
Why do people decide to become doctors anyway?
by Justin Chang, MD
I think we can all agree — physician, payer, provider, patient, etc. — that the ultimate goal of regulations and reform should be to improve the delivery of healthcare, lowering costs and ultimately, making patients healthier and more satisfied.
Coupled with driving toward the results defined by CMS, this requires some fairly significant changes …
How the ACO model can be successful
As a young primary care doctor in Kiev, Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union), Dr. Elena Rogova learned her craft well, working in a hospital that catered to scientists, celebrities, artists, musicians and senior government officials.
As a top medical student, this hospital had sought her services, and she enjoyed her work there. Dr. Rogova had no intention of leaving …
Interviewing a primary care doctor to better understand her professional day
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There are few things I enjoy more than talking about the spine and the brain.
Therefore, it stands to reason that I enjoyed our state neurosurgical society meeting recently. I don’t like big national meetings, being an introvert at heart. Our state meeting, however, is small; this makes for a more intimate atmosphere and more outspoken dialogue. Colleagues from across the state can exchange ideas, new techniques, and opinions. We also …
A neurosurgeon considers stepping out of her comfort zone
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians.
A 24-year-old woman is evaluated for irregular menses and infertility. She reports having had normal puberty but having irregular menses until she started taking an oral contraceptive pill.
She has been unable to become pregnant since marrying 1 year ago despite regular intercourse and discontinuing the …
MKSAP: 24-year-old woman is evaluated for irregular menses and infertility
I am a nurse practitioner committed to expert level end of life care. I a consultant for hospice and palliative care organizations, a clinical educator and a volunteer in my town on the local emergency medical service. My life is paradoxical.
It’s not a happy partnership having a palliative mind and responding to 911 emergency calls to save lives.
It’s not …
The paradoxical life of a palliative care nurse practitioner who’s an EMT
I must have missed the declaration of war on pubic hair.
It must have happened sometime in the last decade because the amount of time, energy, money and emotion both genders spend on abolishing every hair from their genitals is astronomical. The genital hair removal industry, including medical professionals who advertise their specialty services to those seeking the “clean and bare” look, …
The war on pubic hair must end
Everyone knows that the excess growth in health care costs is driving the fiscal crisis in our country.
The problem is that while everybody wants to somehow cut the cost of Medicare/Medicaid, in theory, when it comes time to actually make cuts, the courage of our politicians fails in the face of unrelenting public opposition to cuts in Medicare.
How the IPAB takes policy and puts it in the hands of health care experts
A reader, Dr. Scott Monteith, a psychiatrist, shared his thoughts on government-mandated ‘Meaningful Use’ of Electronic Medical Records (‘MU’) with me after reading a number of my EHR posts, and asked if he could share his thoughts via Health Care Renewal.
Dr. Monteith is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Michigan State University where he was chief resident.
He is a board certified psychiatrist, clinical assistant professor in the departments …
Doctors find incentives elusive for meaningful use of electronic records
American Heart Month may be officially over, but don’t let the lack of media attention fool you into thinking heart disease isn’t a critical issue.
We still need to be mindful of the fact that heart disease is the number one killer of women.
There are simple lifestyle choices you can make to help prevent you from heart disease.
I hope after reading this post you don’t just move on, but I hope …
Tips to prevent heart disease in women
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