The American Board of Medical Specialties will limit the time that physicians have to undergo board certification after completing their residencies. Some member boards have limits in place, the rest will complete a transition to time limits by Jan. 1, 2019. Read the article (Modern Physician)
According the the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 80% of 1,750 primary care physicians, pediatricians, obstetrician/gynecologists and dermatologists had used a smartphone to access information, 60% used a social networking website, 50% used e-mail to communicate with patients and 13% reported blogging. Read the article (ACP Internist)
A recent rise in legal challenges against peer review protections is putting doctors’ confidentiality at risk, legal experts and physicians say. “The climate has definitely changed; the courts are taking a much closer look at individual documents. They’re being much more sensitive to the plaintiffs’ requests. It doesn’t mean all documents will be discoverable, but [...]
Business Journals examined Bureau of Labor Statistics compensation data from May 2011 on 256 metropolitan areas. It found the average U.S. family and general practitioner made $177,300 per year, or $85.26 per hour. The 10 metropolitan markets with the highest annual pay were: 1. Waterloo-Cedar Falls, Iowa ($249,950) 2. Ogden-Clearfield, Utah ($243,150) 3. North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota, [...]
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, one in five patients who went to the ED but were not sick enough to require an inpatient bed. They said they arrived at the emergency department because their primary care physician referred them. “Either they see the patient and say, this is beyond what I can [...]
According to an article published on Family Practice News Digital Network, less continuity of inpatient care by hospitalists significantly increased costs but didn’t increase readmissions in an analysis of 11,234 hospitalizations at an academic medical center. The article further suggests that lower continuity of care among hospitalists was associated with lower readmission rates, but only [...]
According to an article by the AMA, the nation’s allopathic medical schools are on track to increase enrollment by close to a 30% goals set by the Association of American Medical Colleges six years ago. First-year allopathic enrollment is projected to reach 21,376 by 2016-17, a 30% increase above first-year enrollment of 16,488 in 2002-03. [...]
The New England Journal of Medicine conducted a study involving ICUs that participated in the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) clinical information system from 2009 through 2010, linking a survey of ICU staffing practices with patient-level outcomes data from adult admissions. Various models were used to assess the relationship between nighttime intensivist staffing [...]
Turns out that geography has more influence on work lives than you would think. Data from surveys conducted by Today’s Hospitalist offers some insight into how where you work can shape a physician’s career. The surveys ranked three catagories: work/life balance, professional satisfaction and workplace environment. Read more
The agency overseeing the transition to the new codes has proposed a one-year delay from Oct. 1, 2013, to Oct 1, 2014. However, the AMA wants the CMS to take more time to evaluate whether an alternative diagnosis code set it more appropriate than a full transition to the roughly 68,000 ICD-10 codes. The AMA [...]
