Complaints about wait times to see family physicians, anger over government pay cuts for specialists, and specialists threatening to leave town made the news this past weekend—in Ontario.
I was sitting in Toronto Pearson International Airport reading the Toronto Globe & Mail trying to find information on the Chicago White Sox. Instead I found an article, editorial and editorial cartoon all focusing on disputes between the Ontario Medical Association and the provincial government, which is targeting healthcare expenses as it addresses a $15 billion (Canadian) deficit. Hmmm, sounds familiar.
In the U.S., the 50 states act as our problem-solving laboratories, trying out individual approaches to shared dilemmas. But, as the situation in Ontario shows, it can't hurt to also try to learn from what the Canadian provinces are doing.
Read more »
Permalink | Post a Comment
Getting excited about the American Medical Association's 1% increase in membership is almost like getting riled up about the Chicago White Sox getting back to .500 after a three-game sweep of the Cubs.
By winning three straight over their cross-town rivals on the North Side, Chicago's South Side baseball team is now officially mediocre with a record of 21 wins and 21 losses.
The same level of sarcastic euphoria could be viewed by the membership numbers in the latest AMA annual report, which showed an increase from 215,854 members to roughly 217,000 in 2011.
Read more »
Permalink | Post a Comment
Before Jerry Seinfeld started writing jokes and appearing on television, there were doctors and scientists named Seinfeld writing medical research papers and getting their work published in medical journals.
Read more »
Permalink | Post a Comment
The most eye-catching reference in a recent Health Affairs report on patient fears when dealing with “authoritarian” doctors did not get a citation. That's because, instead of coming from a medical journal, it came from a classic episode of the “Seinfeld” TV show.
Read more »
Permalink | Post a Comment
Proponents of caps on malpractice damage awards argue that they effectively control the cost of malpractice premiums in California and Texas, but the evidence of positive effects toward increasing patient safety or decreasing defensive medicine practices remains murky.
Others push for special health courts where healthcare experts could provide unbiased analysis that leads to fair and equitable rulings and place meritless, junk lawsuits on the ash heap of history.
Despite whatever merits they might have, health courts remain an academic and untested concept, and caps have become absorbed by the forces of the political yelling machines that see their passage or defeat as keys to maintaining freedom in our time.
A third option has entered the stage that is quietly gathering evidence of its efficacy: Disclosure, Apology and Offer, which calls for disclosing when adverse events occur, investigating why they happened, sharing that information with patients and their families and then offering compensation.
A coalition of Boston-area organizations is launching an initiative to test the concept, and it is basing its “Roadmap to Reform” on a similar program in place since 2004 at the University of Michigan Health System. The University of Illinois Hospital & Health Science System in Chicago has been doing the same since 2006.
Read more »
Permalink | Post a Comment
Since it began in 2005, 147 different individuals have appeared on the Modern Healthcare/Modern Physician list of the 50 Most Influential Physician Executives, but only one—Dr. Gary Gottlieb, president and CEO of Partners HealthCare, Boston—has made it on the list all eight years.
Gottlieb gave credit to the people who work at Partners for his placement on the list as well as to Partners' role in healthcare reform at the state and national levels.
According to Gottlieb, who finished 34th on this year's list, extending insurance coverage is what will allow payment reform, and this in turn will allow healthcare in the U.S. to move away from fee-for-service, and that will help move the industry "from an illness-care system to a healthcare system." A well-care system, though, might not be realized for a while, he said.
"I think we're a few cures and treatments away from that," said Gottlieb, whose highest appearance on the Most Influential Physician Executive list was No. 8 in 2009.
Read more »
Permalink | Post a Comment
Doctors are known for working long hours. On the outpatient side, it could be because they want to be accessible. On the inpatient side, it might be because they want to provide continuity. Or, it could be because, as one survey just found, most U.S. physicians are at least as happy at work as they are at home.
Medscape, a division of WebMD that provides medical news and clinical information to doctors, conducted its inaugural Physician Lifestyle Report online survey Jan. 12-17; more than 29,000 physicians in 25 specialties responded. The aim of the survey was to uncover insights to physicians' personal lives and their feelings on their own health, wealth, happiness and political views.
On a 1-to-5 scale, doctors seem to be a happy bunch—some even very happy, as about one-third of the physicians responding (both men and women) rated their happiness outside of medicine at a 5. Four in 10 gave their outside-of-work happiness a 4 rating. The average rating was 3.96. Half of physicians said their happiness is about the same at work as it is at home. Four percent said they are happier at work.
The happiest physicians by far were rheumatologists, who averaged a 4.09 level of outside-of-work happiness. There was a three-way tie for least happy among internists, gastroenterologists and neurologists—though with an average happiness rate of 3.88, you can't really call them "sad."
Read more »
Permalink | Post a Comment
The healthcare industry has standards—by the truckload.
It also has a multitude of measures and a googolplex of guidelines.
Read more »
Permalink | Post a Comment
For most, making plans for how to provide healthcare after a disaster strikes is something of an esoteric exercise. But Dr. Lee Hamm of New Orleans has been there and done it, and he offers a mixed review of the latest Institute of Medicine report on the subject.
Read more »
Permalink | Post a Comment
If the number of times your presentation gets mentioned by other speakers is a measure of achievement, John Hasse's talk "Leadership Lessons from the Jazz Masters" at the American Medical Group Association's conference was a rousing success—just as his piano interludes successfully stirred attendees from their Saturday-morning drowsiness.
Read more »
Permalink | Post a Comment
If the number of times your presentation gets mentioned by other speakers is a measure of achievement, John Hasse's talk "Leadership Lessons from the Jazz Masters" at the American Medical Group Association's conference was a rousing success—just as his piano interludes successfully stirred attendees from their Saturday-morning drowsiness.
Read more »
Permalink | Post a Comment
