Every physician, administrator, insurer knows that burdensome prior authorizations delay patient care and indirectly are contributing to physician burnout. This burden has likely made it impossible for physicians to continue their private practices and perhaps has contributed to the merger of practices and systems trying to streamline this process for themselves. When you have a…
Are rules good or bad? Well that depends on how good your medicine is, and whether you’re involved in the business of healthcare. Its easy to order a test than rely on a physical examination finding, is it not? What compensates a physician more, even if she is just an employee? The several minutes performing…
The Claim In November 2018, a Chinese researcher He Jiankui, claimed to use Crispr-Cas9 to genetically modify baby twins. He made the announcement on the eve of the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong, a fitting venue. By directing Crispr-Cas9, he claimed to have used in vitro fertilization to create human embryos…
Yes, Yes it can. It’s simple, really, fund the Health Care Savings Account Deductible and as Walmart or Whole Foods, or any other company as a matter of fact, does, put real prices on everything. It’s that simple? What? You don’t believe me? Look at what Singapore has done with its healthcare system? Wait, what?…
Unfortunately, one of the largest Electronic Health Records vendors gets a fine to resolve civil and criminal liability due to its business practices with Practice Fusion that it acquired in 2018. If anyone recalls, and I don’t think we do, in early 2018 the government shutdown diverted everyone’s attention from another fiasco that involved Allscripts: medical information…
As I sit here, at 5am, staring at my screen, trying to absorb random medical knowledge from a set of board review questions, I wonder whether this, “board exams”, will ever end. Like many physicians, I have been taking one big board exam after another. It was USMLE Step 1, COMLEX level 1, followed by USMLE…
Recently, I read an article on the ACP internist about a Street Medicine Fellowship program located in University of Pittsburg Medical Center (UPMC). The article is written eloquently and does a phenomenal job explaining what Street Medicine is and what the fellowship pertains. Brief Summary of the Fellowship Dr. James S. Withers MD founded the…
The Statistics According to the American Foundation for Suicide for Prevention, in the year 2017, men were more likely to commit suicide than women, by 3.54% more likely! In 2017 47,173 Americans died by suicideand there were an estimated 1.4 million suicide attempts! If that doesn’t get you off the couch thenperhaps the fact that…
To this day, our understanding on nicotine addiction and its effects on teens is based on our understanding on utilization of tobacco cigarettes, which is measurable. However, when it comes to vaping, we don’t know howmuch nicotine is being delivered. Vaping has become ubiquitous in many high schools throughout the UnitedStates and accepted as a ‘safe’…