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?

Read more

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.

Read more

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.”

Read more

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:

Read more

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.

Read more

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.”

Read more

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.

Read more

Posted by: AtlasMD

May 13, 2014

Dr. Doug Gets Down To Business In Minnesota

Dr. Dog Nunamaker leaves no stone unturned in his AAPS panel. Topics include the myth of health care insurance, the logistics of subscription-based medicine, and Atlas MD’s burgeoning success…

Posted by: AtlasMD

May 13, 2014

Spending Someone Else’s Money Is Inefficient. So Why Does Healthcare Insist On Doing It Like That?

Jeffrey Singer, M.D., or Dr. Singer, is a general surgeon in Arizona. He’s also an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.

He claims that healthcare costs are too damn high—and they’re only getting worse. He’s got every reason to make that claim. Turns out that last week, researchers at Harvard and Dartmouth released a report estimating that healthcare costs will continue to grow faster than the economy for at least the next two decades.

Read more

Posted by: AtlasMD

May 12, 2014

Think Like A Business! High-Deductible Plans Will Decrease Healthcare Spending.

High-deductible health plans appeared after legislation was passed in 2003 that required persons opening a health savings account to enroll in a high-deductible plan. They gained prominence recently as employers watched their own healthcare spending skyrocket.

And in 2013, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that healthcare spending had grown at a record low pace from 2009 to 2011.

However, in this new HSA environment, practices need to think more like a business.

Read more