Medical practice

A group of medical societies brought together by the American Medical Association continued last week to define its approach on quality measurement. The consortium, which includes more than 100 specialty and state medical societies, has developed 184 physician quality measures to date. The 184 measures address conditions that represent 80 percent of Medicare reimbursement, including asthma, hypertension and heart failure. Now the group, the Physician Consortium for Performance …

Call it a sign of the times. For the first time, more than half the physicians entering residencies at Detroit's Wayne State University are coming in from non-U.S. medical programs. This year, foreign-educated students will fill 91 of the school's 162 residency slots, an influx which mirrors the experience of many programs in the U.S.. The new crop of students is particularly striking given that only 37 of the school's own graduates will take part in the program. School administrators …

A California medical group has become one of the first large U.S. practices to publish prices for common procedures. To date, a growing list of hospitals have begun to post pricing, but medical practices have not jumped on the bandwagon as enthusiastically. Torrance, CA-based HealthCare Partners Medical Group, a 500-physician primary care practice, has posted fees for 58 common procedures on its site, including chest X-rays, physical exams and flu vaccinations. The group's execs have …

Often, patients get conflicting advice from the different specialists they see, in part due to competition for business. This is particularly common among specialties like cardiology, vascular surgery, cardiac surgery and neurology, where the lines between specialties have begun to blur. To sidestep this issue, some specialists are forming groups that serve the hospital jointly, with guidelines requiring all physicians to work as a team. Not only does this improve collaboration between …

Hanging tough in the face of furious physician criticism, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas has kicked off a program allowing beneficiaries to compare physician ratings. The health plan is the largest in the state, with more than 40,000 participating physician and 3.4 million beneficiaries, so its decisions have a significant effect on the market as a whole, making the ratings a major issue for the state's doctors.

The BCBS quality score currently uses 38 measures, and will add …

The current system Medicare used to gradually bump up reimbursement rates for physicians isn't fair, and should be replaced by one which takes physician practice costs into account, a group of 87 medical organizations told Congress. The group, which includes the American Medical Association, notes that hospitals and nursing homes are paid based on their costs. However, physicians are paid based on a formula known as the sustainable growth rate (SGR), tied to the U.S. economy, which has …

Aetna has changed its reimbursement procedures to make billing and payment  simpler for doctors. The insurer is expanding the ability of physicians to submit claims electronically, and more significantly, is setting up a program that allows plan members to pay out-of-pocket expenses automatically through their debit or credit card. (While this would apply to small co-pays, the real point is to make sure doctors don't end up with huge unpaid bills under high-deductible plans.) Aetna …

Adding yet another wrinkle to the agency's complex relationship with doctors, CMS may begin profiling physicians and targeting those it deems inefficient sometime next year. Herbert Kuhn, acting deputy administrator of CMS, told a House subcommittee that the agency will have the data and computer capacity available to do the tracking as soon as mid-2008. To monitor efficiency, CMS would compare levels of tests physicians order for certain types of patients to tests ordered by other …

While in theory, doctors say that they would reveal medical errors to patients, a new study has found that most don't actually do so when they have the chance. The study, done by the University of Iowa's Carver College of Medicine, surveyed faculty physicians, residents and medical students at academic medical centers to find out what factors affected whether physicians disclosed errors. Of the 538 respondents, 97 percent said that they'd disclose minor errors and 93 percent said they'd …

Cut or keep reimbursement at a flatline, increase paperwork, and doctors will like Medicaid even less. That's what's been happening in Florida since authorities kicked off a new pilot program moving beneficiaries into HMOs, according to new research by the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute. In 2005, former Florida governor Jeb Bush (R) signed a law creating the pilot program, which also caps spending growth at 8 percent over five years. Since that time, it appears that …