5.8 Million people in the U.S. suffer from CHF and this accounts for over 1 million hospitalizations a year. Rehospitalization rates approach 30% at 90 days. The costs to treat heart failure are over $37 Billion a year. The majority of the costs of heart failure come from hospitalizations and repeat hospitalizations. Hospitalizations account for… Read More
In order to simplify and make more uniform emergency department triage, the ESI acuity scale was developed. ESI has become very popular because it has been validated for interrater and inter-institution reliability and is even endorsed as a best practice by AHRQ ( the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality). Dr. Wiler and others… Read More
It was just a matter of time before insurance companies passed on their ACA losses to physicians. I mark is just the first insurance company to announce that they will cut physician pay by 4.5% to help mitigate their losses from the Obamacare plans. As multiple insurance companies have announced that they suffered significant losses… Read More
As our population gets older and older patients are living longer with more complicated medical problems it is often a challenge to determine which patients should be admitted and which patient should be discharged home. Additional pressures from CMS(Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) and health plans’ pressure to discharge patients adds an additional complexity… Read More
Average physicians salaries by a group called MDSearch Specialty Average Salary by Specialty 2016 Allergy/Immunology 334,889.00 Anesthesiology 456,141.60 Cardiology Invasive 505,168.00 Cardiology Noninvasive 486,900.40 Dermatology 492,978.80 Emergency Medicine 343,276.00 Endocrinology 246,712.60 Family Medicine 238,147.40 Gastroenterology 500,044.20 Hematology/Oncology 457,796.80 Hospitalist 268,383.00 Internal Medicine 253,263.80 Nephrology 356,092.00 Neurology 286,157.60 OB/GYN 339,029.80 Occupational Medicine 233,461.20 Oncology 481,116.60… Read More
There are countless new health related apps for your smartphone coming on the market every month. They can measure your heart rate, help with differential diagnosis and possibly even measure your blood pressure. Researchers at John Hopkins University looked to see how accurate one of the most popular blood pressure measuring apps was. They published… Read More
A national physician survey released by the AMA on February 16, 2016 identified ways to decrease opiate overdoses. The survey had five main findings: 1. PDMPs are valuable tools: 87 percent of physicians agree that PDMPs help them become more informed about a patient’s prescription history. 2. PDMPs need changes to be more beneficial: Physicians… Read More
The HIMSS Board approved the following definition of interoperability on April 5, 2013: In healthcare, interoperability is the ability of different information technology systems and software applications to communicate, exchange data, and use the information that has been exchanged. Data exchange schema and standards should permit data to be shared across clinicians, lab, hospital, pharmacy,… Read More
In a major win for the insurance industry and a tremendous loss for patients and consumers, health insurers will not be forced to have minimum hospital and physician standards for 2017, nor will they have to offer standardized options in health plans. Health plans will continue to offer so called narrow provider networks which may… Read More
