Win an Amazon Gift Card: What Are Your Goals for Your Practice in 2009?

As a way to encourage goal setting and planning for medical practices, I am hosting a contest.  I will email a $15 Amazon gift card to the person who sends in the best plan for improving their medical practice in 2009.
Here are the rules:

Under the comments section for this post, list the goal your practice will [...]

Link Fest: Updates on group visits, RVUs, Medicare and the ‘Physician Shortage’

I’ve been storing up some links and today seemed to be a good time to have at ‘em!  They range from the scary (Health Policy and Market) to the fun (the Efficient MD’s slide show.)
Read The Country Doc Report for another take on the group visit.  Country Doc relates how his practice does a group diabetic [...]

State CME Guidelines

State
MD/DO
CME Credits
Required
Term
(years)
AMA PRA
Category 1 Credit(s)TM
required
Required Topics

Alabama
MD/DO
12
1
12
 

Alaska
MD/DO
50
2
50
 

Arizona
MD
40
2
 
 

DO
40
2
24(AOA 1-A)
 

Arkansas
MD/DO
20
1
Not specified
 

California
MD
100
4
100
1 time requirement of 12 hrs. pain mgmt. and end of life care; If >20% of patients are over 65, 20 hrs. in Geriatric medicine required

DO
150
3
60
(AOA 1-A or B
1 time requirement of 12 hrs. pain mgmt. and end of life care; If >20% of patients are over 65, [...]

Walk the Talk: the Patient Encounter

I am fascinated by how we physicians communicate (or not) with each other and with our patients.  As a medical student and resident NO ONE ever thought about how physicians communicated with patients.  We were always so focused on nailing the disease process and treatment that the patient was nearly ignored.  I don’t think I [...]

Allow Natural Death v. Do Not Resuscitate

“Allow Natural Death”
There is a movement afoot to replace DNR with “AND” or Allow Natural Death.  The idea is that patients and families are put off by the verbiage of DNR–that agreeing to a DNR is a death sentence.  Families and patients do not want to sign such an order committing them to what appears [...]

How Doctors Think Outside of the Medical Box

It was a tough week in Pookieville.  I worked all week at one of my favorite hospitals.  I like working there because the specialists I work with are hypercompetent and always willing to help.  Furthermore, they like to chat. Well, they like to chat about interesting cases.
I was particularly challenged this week because I had to [...]

Medical Practice as a Socially Responsible Business

I have searched for a way to describe my view of medicine as a business.  I finally realized that the practice of medicine should be classified as a socially responsible business.   “Who cares?”, you say.  Well, I say we all should care.  We went into medicine to help people.  However, as I am fond of saying, [...]

AHIP Rides in to Save Health Care

America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) has released a plan on how to reduce health care costs.  The platform is summarized below:
The new reform proposal would:
Ensure universal coverage by guaranteeing coverage for pre-existing conditions, fixing the health care safety net, giving tax credits to working families and enacting an individual coverage requirement;
Call on the nation to set [...]

Play Nice in the ED: Why Hospitalists and ED Docs Should Be Friends

I do a lot of work as a hospitalist, and have noted a fair amount of antagonism amongst my colleagues towards the ED.  There seems to be a lot of bickering between ED docs and hospitalists as to WHO should take responsibility for patient care. More specifically, if a patient has been admitted to a [...]

Crash Test Dummy: 5 Signs Your Practice is Failing

Buckle up, partner, it’s time for another PookieMD biz refresher course!  This time, it’s on unmistakable signs that your practice business is about to crash and burn!
Knuckle gripping sign number 1:  You have cash flow problems.  You can’t meet payroll because you don’t have enough cash on hand.  YOU MUST BUDGET FOR CASH FLOW!  (Which leads [...]