Cardiologist Loses Practice

More Doctors Giving Up Private Practices

With the business of medicine session of POM3 comming up, I will start to post pieces to our course blog. Interesting piece in the New York Times about More Doctors Giving Up Private Practices. Your generation of physicians seems to be happy to take salaried positions.

Know Your Stark Laws.

Most of the recent posts here have been about health care financing, mainly because with the upcoming elections, this is a very hot topic. However, the purpose of this blog is to discuss all things business. Bisnow is a media company that sends out daily e-newsletters about key local industries, including health care. Today's post is a very interesting one on changes in the Stark laws. Stark laws are designed to prevent physicians from profiting from self-referral.
For more detailed and accurate information on the Stark laws here is the CMS site link, though the Wikipedia entry is pretty good.

Getting Better Value from Medicare

Maggie Mahar is an author and journalist on health care. She discusses many issues related to the business of medicine on her blog. Here her paper on Getting Better Value from Medicare. Whether you agree with her or not, this piece highlights many of the problems with Medicare (and health insurance in general) and presents some potential solutions.

P.S. She also does a good job breaking down the McCain and Obama health plans.

Worried sick over our health care

Love the subtitle of this excellent piece from the Chicago Tribune "But candidates don't address why American medical care costs too much and isn't as good as it should be."

"Polls show voters worry a lot about health care and how much they spend on it. Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama have responded by peddling plans they claim will help more Americans attain and afford care.But neither candidate has focused publicly on treating the real problem: why American medical care costs too much and isn't as good as it should be."

Defensive Medicine Gets Offensive

Dr. Benjamin Brewer is a blogger for the Wall Street Journal. His insightful piece on the cost of defensive medicine get at the heart of the matter of what physicians face in day to day practice. He estimates that defesive medicine accounts for 10% of health care costs, but I believe this is probably an underestimate.

Paying Doctors and Lawyers

How do doctors and lawyers get paid? Very differently! This post points out some of the differences.
The reality is that our current health insurance system does not reimburse well for cognitive aspects of care, and doesn't reimburse at all for things like phone calls, paper work, etc.
Many primary care physicians have done these later services for free out of professional obligation towards their patients. However, this will not likely be the case for much longer. Physicians will either start billing patients directly or demand that everything be done in an office visit. Not the most effective way to practice medicine, but it will likely help pay the bills.