by Jan Gurley, MD The news that Dr. Marcus Conant has quit practicing medicine is a blow to healthcare here in the Bay Area. And a sad symbol of all that is wrong with healthcare – and in particularly, the way we treat primary care practitioners – in America today. It would be hard to find a doctor more symbolic of the best of medicine than Marcus Conant – a man willing to devote his life to caring for people who, at the time, no one wanted to care for, a person who is a powerful advocate for not only his patients, but for all those affected by a devastating and stigmatizing disease, and a practitioner willing to devote himself to the tremendous amount of life-long-learning needed to not only transition into a lower paying field (from dermatology to primary care), but to stay up on developments as the stakes rose as treatment became vastly complex and life-changing. (...) Read the rest of What to do if your doctor quits and leaves medicine No comment | Tags: Patient , Primary care | Category: Patient care
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by Jaan Sidorov, MD Is the Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) the panacea for all that ails health care? Have we exhausted all the allegories related to the term “home?” The answer to both questions apparently is no, thanks to this American Journal of Managed Care article by Timothy Hoff titled The Shaky Foundation of the Patient Centered Medical Home . Dr. Hoff appropriately shelves PCMH policy and looks at the topic with a market-based perspective. From that vantage point, it all boils down to two customers: the primary care physicians and their patients. Neither are slam dunks. (...) Read the rest of Let consumers decide if they want the patient centered medical home No comment | Tags: Primary care | Category: Health IT and EMR
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2010, EMR, General, Patients, Physicians, VA, health it Tags:
2010, EMR, health it, health it and emr, Patients, physicians, primary care
I remember when I first started my job at a healthcare facility 5+ years ago, I ran into these codes they called ICD-9. Yes, this was all very foreign to me, but I learned quickly the meaning of ICD-9. I also learned quickly that the EMR vendor which had been selected (before I was there) didn’t provide a list of ICD-9 as part of their EMR software (they do now). They did provide an upload feature and so we exported a list out of our old PMS, cleaned them up a little and then uploaded them into the new EMR. Not a fun or effective process even that way. Obviously, we’ve come a long way in five years. There are plenty of free lists of ICD-9 codes around the net that people can use, manipulate and add to their EMR software pretty easily. However, I couldn’t help but wonder what solutions were being offered for EMR vendors planning for ICD-10. Yes, EMR vendors do have until October 1st, 2013 (which has been moved back a bunch of times so let me know if it’s been changed again) and so maybe EMR vendors aren’t concerned about it yet. Although, I’m guessing that many have already put a lot of thought into preparing for ICD-10. My question for EMR vendors is, how are you planning to handle the ICD-10 codes? We’re talking about going from 14,315 diagnosis codes to 69,101 diagnosis codes. The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), AHIMA, the American Hospital Association, and 3M Health Information Systems have put together some General Equivalence Mappings (GEMs) that I believe try to do some mapping between ICD-9 and ICD-10. However, like translating a language there’s rarely a one to one match. With 4+ times as many codes there couldn’t be. So, certainly there’s the question of how you’re going to make the transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10 coding? Although, at a simpler level, how are you planning to get the almost 70k ICD-10 codes in your system? Does anyone know of a database of these codes that’s available for EMR vendors? Is each EMR vendor going to try and create their own? What’s happening in this regard? And maybe the answer is….ask us once we’re done dealing with stage 1 meaningful use. ICD-10 isn’t until stage 2 or stage 3 meaningful use. Related posts: NoMoreClipboard’s PHR Integrations with EMR Vendors My very first meeting with a vendor at HIMSS was... My EHR Certification Recommendations – For EMR Vendors No one asked (well at least not publicly), but I... Should ARRA be Paying EMR Vendors? I understand that looking at the ARRA EHR stimulus money...
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3M, AHIMA, CMS, EHR, EMR, EMR Vendors, Electronic Health Record, GEM, HealthCare IT, ICD-10, ICD-9, NCHS Tags:
2009, 2010, ahima, ARRA, Change, EHR, EHR Stimulus, electronic medical record, EMR Vendor, gem, HealthCare IT, ICD-10, Meaningful Use, NIST, PHR
by Michele R. Berman, MD Celebrities are powerful role models and are important to consumers concerned with their health because of the perception that famous people have access to the best health practices and medical care. The public looks to celebrities for hope and inspiration as they struggle with their own health issues and fight disease. However the health practices that celebrities promote are often questionable and misleading. (...) Read the rest of Kombucha tea can be dangerous to your health No comment | Tags: Patient | Category: Medical potpourri
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by Crystal Phend Homocysteine-lowering supplements do not help prevent further cardiovascular events in heart attack survivors, a large randomized trial affirmed. The trial, which followed more than 12,000 heart attack survivors over nearly seven years, found that folic acid plus vitamin B12 effectively reduced homocysteine levels, but did not reduce major vascular events overall nor any other individual endpoint compared with placebo, reported Jane M. Armitage, BM BChBSc, MBBS, of the University of Oxford, England, and colleagues. (...) Read the rest of Homocysteine lowering does not reduce heart attack risk No comment | Tags: Drugs , Heart | Category: Drugs and pharma
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