To market, to market! A marketing plan for the next 6 months.

 

As promised, I would set up a goal for the year, and plan to achieve it.  I had earlier noted that business for my company, ExtraMD was down for the first time in five years.  My company supplies physicians to clinics/hospitals/urgent care in the city where I live.  I am the physician owner, and feel [...]

Medicine Means You Never Have to Say You’re Sorry

Just as hospitals are encouraging us to apologize for our mistakes, comes a warning from Steven I. Kern, JD.  He cautions that admitting errors may result in loss of malpractice coverage.  He states :
For example, many malpractice insurance policies include a clause that allows the carrier to deny coverage if you do anything that adversely [...]

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 [...]

The Common Sense Declaration: How to Fix Health Care

I am on a reading frenzy, and finally got to the October 17, 2008 issue of Medical Economics.  There was an excellent article by Elizabeth A. Pector, MD, on fixing health care.  I will highlight some key points, but encourage all of you to see the entire article (pages 29-33.)  (www.memag.com)
“Establish equal rights for doctors.”  Dr. [...]

10 Reasons Your Medical Practice is Failing, and How to Fix It

As the ExtraMD, PookieMD has seen lots of practices.  I have also been asked to evaluate failing practices to see where they got off track.  There are some common themes amongst failing practices.  For once, I will NOT carry on about reimbursement, but rather focus on where the physician owners of these failing practices went wrong. [...]

Survival Tips for Primary Care: How to Save Money

Now that I have vented/ranted/opined on the demise of primary care, let’s move to some survival tips. Following are PookieMD’s two fundamental. most important, and most loathsome rules of survival in primary care medicine.
The money is in the numbers.
Time is money.
Yes, you have to see patients to  make money, and given today’s reimbursement you have to [...]

What if Starbucks billed like ICD-10?

Ah, yes, ICD-10 is coming!  Yes, the new coding system with 10 times more codes than the previous is slated to go live in 2011.  Much of the world now uses ICD-10 because it has more codes, as apparently, we are running out of codes.  You, my beloved provider, will be shouldering the burden of [...]

Resuscitating Primary Care, Part I

 
As promised, I will turn my laser like focus to the task of “fixing” primary care.  I will examine both micro and macro ways of doing this, coming up with to do lists that physicians can implement in their practices as well as global suggestions that will take shifts in health care policy.  (Which only we [...]

Black Tuesday For Primary Care: Why Physicians Would Rather Do Anything Else

I have been in practice for 15 years, and most of my colleagues hate primary care.  (Remember, I come from a cohort of internists, the ones that should be the defenders primary care!)  In my rovings as the ExtraMD I still do some primary care, to keep me honest, and to remind me how hard [...]

10 Ways to Waste Money in Primary Care

Continuing on the primary care waste theme  (no, primary care is NOT a waste!),  I would like to give you my 10 top ways that primary care physicians waste money. 
10 TOP WAYS TO WASTE MONEY IN PRIMARY CARE:
1) Open the office at 9:00, close at 5:00 and have 90 minute lunch. 
This practice started back in [...]