Physicians and the Economy

What do physicians contribute to the economy here in the U.S.?  In a recent study, it was reported that they create and support 12.6 million jobs, 17.1 jobs per physician.  They contribute 2.3 trillion to the overall economy. In addition to the jobs, add in the taxes...

Medicare Quality Payment Program

The Quality Payment Program improves Medicare by helping providers focus on care quality and in making patients healthier. The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) ended the Sustainable Growth Rate formula, which threatened clinicians...

The Death of Private Medical Practice

Historically, in the 2000s, 2/3 of medical practices were physician-owned and hospitals owned the rest.  More recently, physicians are rapidly abandoning private practice so that at this time about ½ are owned by doctors.  Why? Well, start with the Affordable Care Act...

Quality Care Quandary

We hear much about the emphasis on improving quality care and even more about how to report and assess it.  Performance is being much more closely scrutinized.  The idea was to employ the huge benefits expected from electronic health records (EHRs), but that created...

CMS-Medicare MACRA Law 2016

CMS-MEDICARE —  MACRA, PQRS, VBPM, MU, MIPSI, etc. My, oh my, you better learn your acronyms if you want to keep up.  Hard to focus on what a provider and staff now must do or plan to do within the next few months.  Here’s a short list: MACRA (Medicare...

EMR=No Copy and Paste

Warnings continue to providers to avoid copying and pasting medical record information.  It is a common practice, (with 89% of physicians surveyed reported doing it) but may create some real problems later in both the payment for services, and in a risk-related legal...