Lisa Masson is a family physician.

Medical board tests are worse than airport security

Physician
July 19, 2019

A lot has been written about board recertification requirements. Physicians have grumbled and moaned for years. The objections have caused changes. Some specialty boards have abandoned the tests. And yet — for most specialties, we still find ourselves turning over our credit card numbers, blocking off a day of our incredibly busy lives and heading for a professional testing center.

On the surface, the process is absurd.

Oh, I get that we …

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Medical board tests are worse than airport security

The clinical burden of documentation

Health Technology
January 11, 2019

The purpose of clinical documentation is to efficiently communicate critical data to peers in a readable fashion while meeting compliance and billing requirements. This documentation should not represent a data dump.

Physicians continually increase our dependence on technology as the digital age deluges us with data. Accessing the right information at the right time is essential to providing appropriate care. The tsunami of new evidence necessitates clinical decision support, yet we …

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The clinical burden of documentation

What’s barbaric in medicine?

Medical Education
January 3, 2019

Late one evening, I received a text from my oldest daughter.

“What in medicine, that we do now, will we think is barbaric in 50 years?”

Wow. They play more provocative bar games now than they played when I was in my 20s.

I promptly texted back my knee-jerk response: “chemotherapy.” As we are on the brink of precision medicine, what will the next generation think of our “slash, burn and poison” paradigm …

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What’s barbaric in medicine?

Computers are the modern stethoscope

Physician
November 29, 2018

I wrote this a decade ago:

It is a brave new world. I have used an electronic health record in my office for ten years. With a click of a mouse, I can show you how your blood pressure has varied over the last ten years. I can graph your hemoglobin, track your diabetes or tell you if that was the medication we tried last time.

But with every two steps forward, …

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Computers are the modern stethoscope

CURES is not a fix for the opioid crisis

Health Technology
October 1, 2018

The California Department of Justice mandate to consult CURES (Controlled Substance Utilization Review and Evaluation) prior to prescribing, ordering, administering, or furnishing a Schedule II, II or IV controlled substance becomes effective on October 2, 2018.

The law states that CURES must be consulted the first time a patient is prescribed, ordered or administered a Schedule II, III or IV controlled substance. CURES must be consulted every four months thereafter if the …

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CURES is not a fix for the opioid crisis