Posted by: AtlasMD

May 19, 2014

Direct Care Blackup Plan: 8 Reasons To Go Locum Tenens

We know that physicians are unhappy with the way things are going in healthcare.

Some even believe that up to a third of the US physician work force is planning to leave the profession in the next 3 years

Direct primary care practices are the single best way to restore patient and provider satisfaction. Those brave enough to cut the red tape (i.e. health insurers, both public and private) find a remarkable reduction in billing paperwork, unrecovered fees, and electronic documentation requirements.

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Posted by: AtlasMD

May 18, 2014

When Direct Care Works It WORKS.

Transitioning from insurance-based care into Direct Care isn’t a walk in the park. Cutting the red tape is not necessarily about EASE.

It’s about AFFECT. Affecting patients lives, affecting our own lives as doctors and business owners. It’s about having a stake in the work we do, and being rewarded for doing it well.

Here’s an earnest email from Mary Wulfers. She’s helping her husband run his newly opened Direct Care practice.

We’re really busy. Mike has about 130 new patients and they all seem to want a physical right away, so he’s really really busy. Around 170-180 patients transferred from his old practice, and we’ve obtained and built all those charts as well. I continue to work full time at the office and then some out of necessity, which is just fine. Younger families are really starting to sign up; it’s almost like the word has just gotten out. Last Monday was quite a day, had 17 new patients sign up and our nurse was out sick that day, too.This has been a very rewarding experience in so many ways but a lot of work, too. Out [sic] new website should be online soon, can’t wait to see it. Mike is really happy about some of the new patients he’s getting, some with poor insurance who are so excited to have a good doctor for the first time. How can you beat that?

Seriously, how CAN you beat that?

Posted by: AtlasMD

May 18, 2014

Stop Losing Primary Care Physicians To Burnout

Here’s a central difficulty of the Affordable Care Act: If everyone has access to health insurance, then everyone has access to all the medical care they need. But curing sickness and preventing death is costly, so why not save money and lives by making primary care doctors more affordable?

After all, it’s our business to KEEP you healthy. And keeping you healthy cuts costs in the long-run.

However, we don’t and won’t have enough primary care providers in the United States unless things change.

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Posted by: AtlasMD

May 18, 2014

Healthcare Executives Need Big Compensation, And Big Results

“It’s stressful, dirty, hard work, and the burnout rate is high,” said Tom McNulty, a 19-year-old college student who volunteers for an ambulance corps outside Rochester. He told the New York Times that he finds it fulfilling, but that he would not make it a career: “Financially, it’s not feasible.”

Turns out the healthcare industry is staffed by some of the lowest as well as highest paid professionals in any business. The average staff nurse is paid about $61,000 a year, and an emergency medical technician earns just about minimum wage, for a yearly income of $27,000, according to the Compdata analysis.

Did you know that many medics work two or three jobs just to get by?

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Posted by: Josh Umbehr, M.D.

May 15, 2014

Here’s An Idea. Let’s Make Healthcare So Affordable That You’ll Need A Loan For Your Deductible.

I’m not sure if you’ve heard the parable of the tall man and the cat.

Maybe not, since I had to make it up in light of healthcare’s unending cost increase.

See in this allegorical village there was a group of citizens who were very upset with a man who lived there. This man was very, very tall, and he made all the villagers feel uneasy (they were insecure about the crowns of their heads, who knows why).

One night, a mob caravanned to the tall man’s house with tall, burning torches.

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Posted by: AtlasMD

May 15, 2014

Pay Kevin MD Like A French Doctor (Or Get Your Numbers Straight Before Blaming Doc Salaries For Overspending.)

Whenever new physician salary data is released, reporters and policy experts often compare doctor salaries in the United States to those of other countries: most notably, France. But Kevin Pho isn’t pleased.

That’s because because, practically on cue, Vox’s Sarah Kliff — regarded by thought leaders an excellent healthcare writer, is “uncharacteristically” lazy in framing physician salaries through a biased lens.

She writes, “Primary care doctors in the United States, do tend to earn a lot more than their counterparts abroad. One 2011 study, which looked at doctor salaries from 2008, found that the average primary care doctor in France earns about $95,000, compared to the $186,000 that physicians net in the United States.”

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Posted by: AtlasMD

May 15, 2014

Obamacare Exchanges Burn Taxpayer Dollars By The Truckload

Remember Cash for Clunkers? That program gave car buyers rebates of up to $4,500 if they traded in less fuel-efficient vehicles for new vehicles with better gas mileage.

But because a lot of the vehicles eligible for the rebate would have sold anyway, taxpayers ended up paying about $24,000 per additional car sale that these incentives produced.

And it looks like Obamacare is in a fierce race to beat Cash for Clunkers to become the poster child for mismanagement of federal taxpayer resources:

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Posted by: AtlasMD

May 14, 2014

The ICD-10 Emperor Has No Clothes

They howled ICD-10 was delayed. And they howled loud and fierce.

Apparently, the life of U.S. healthcare hangs in the throes of 68,000 diagnosis codes.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world has switched to ICD-10. But here’s a secret. The World Health Organization’s version of ICD-10 has about 16,000 codes, equivalent to ICD-9-CM.

Let’s reiterate: The rest of the world is not using ICD-10-Clinical Modification set, which has 68,000 codes.

The Canadian version of ICD-10 has about 16,000 codes, but the physicians do not use those codes for billing and reimbursement. They use a more limited code set of about 600 three-digit codes.

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Posted by: AtlasMD

May 13, 2014

Harvard Policy Researcher Says Obamacare Will Inadvertently Break Fee-For-Service Model

In Washington, Amitabh Chandra stood before a roomful of economists, policy makers and health care experts earlier this month. As director of Health Policy Research at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, he closed a presentation about the slowdown in health care spending over the last decade by citing an article in The New York Times.

“Changes in the way doctors and hospitals are paid — how much and by whom — have begun to curb the steady rise of health care costs in the New York region,” the article declared. “Costs are still going up faster than overall inflation, but the annual rate of increase is the lowest in 21 years.”

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Posted by: AtlasMD

May 13, 2014

FDA Needs Reform Or The Market Might Not Innovate Life-Saving Drugs.

Okay, maybe those doctoral economists will come in handy. Jokes aside, bringing life-saving drugs to market will never be cheap – and it will require government participation.

However, there’s a difference between red tape syphoning better-spent dollars to line the pockets of insurance companies who DON’T actually care for our population, and making sure a drug company developing an Alzheimer’s treatment can recoup their billion dollar investment.

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