clinicians

Officials with the LSU charity system say that they're saving hundreds of millions of dollars a year thanks to their ongoing disease management program. While 20 states are experimenting with disease management programs for Medicaid and other indigent patients, LSU has been offering such programs at its charity hospitals for as many as ten years. The LSU programs focus on the effective management diabetes, asthma, cancer, congestive heart failure and HIV. The programs include standard …

Pittsburgh's Allegheny General Hospital has kicked off a new program inviting engineering students into the operating room and teaches them how to use biomedical technology. The idea behind the course, which involves students at the city's Carnegie Mellon University, is to prepare them to develop the next wave of surgical technology. The course has proven popular, with enrollment leaping from 12 students to 44 over the first three semesters it was offered. Working with surgeons, the …

A new analysis of insurance claims suggests that in many cases, overstressed doctors are phoning in antibiotic prescriptions for patients in situations where they perhaps should have seen them instead. The study, by healthcare information firm Thomson Medstat, reviewed 1.5 million claims for antibiotic prescriptions made in 2004 for children and adults under 65. When they analyzed the data, researchers found that 40 percent of patients refilling an antibiotic prescription hadn't seen a …

A New York-based medical practice has gone back to the future with a service offering same-day house calls. Sickday Medical House Calls, which is emerging from a Manhattan medical practice in business since 2001, sends doctors and physician associates to homes, offices and hotels in Manhattan. Unlike most private practices, clinicians are available seven days a week from 6 am to 11 pm. Spending an average of 30 minutes with each patient, Sickday docs treat common conditions like abdominal …

According to one researcher, about two-thirds of U.S. medical schools now offer some form of training on religion and spirituality in medicine. Other researchers--with support from NIH grants--are studying the effect of third-party prayers on cancer patients. Some doctors are even calling for clinicians to take a "spiritual history" when they examine patients. But is this appropriate? Probably not, given the weak scientific evidence for a connection between religious practice and better …

Aetna has created a Web-based course designed to help clinicians work better with culturally-diverse patient populations. The training is available not only for Aetna physicians, nurses and internal clinical employees in the Aetna network, but also out-of-network physicians who've filed claims with the health insurer. The classes offer case-based education on cross-cultural healthcare situations. Doctors and nurses who complete the classes are eligible for CME and CEU credits. Aetna has …

Providers are certainly mortified when they make a "never" mistake--such as performing surgery on the wrong limb--but even then, few spontaneously offer to waive the costs of the procedure. These days, however, some large employers are arguing that providers should do just that. The Leapfrog Group, which represents giant employers like Boeing and General Electric, is now asking providers to cancel the bill and issue an apology whenever any of the  …

A study by OTN, a physician practice services company, has found that 66 percent of community-based oncologists believe that pay-for-performance (P4P) programs are a useful tool for oncologists and an overwhelming majority (94 percent) think that adopting P4P measures will improve patient outcomes. But whether they like them or not, 81 percent realize that P4P programs will eventually become part of their practice. "It is clear from the survey that clinicians are interested in P4P programs and are willing to work to develop them," noted John Amos, President and CEO of OTN in a press release. In addition to their views on P4P programs, almost all the oncologists surveyed (97 percent) felt that IT adoption would become necessary in order for them to manage their medical practice.

For more statistics from the study:
- see this press release

Pay-for-performance schemes are making the news these days, notably spearheaded by Wellpoint subsidiary Blue Cross of California, which just announced that it was paying out $65 million in bonuses to providers who had demonstrated good outcomes. Wellpoint is also …

The American Health Information Community released a set of thirty proposals yesterday designed to encourage healthcare providers to adopt electronic medical records and other information technology. Proposals include standards for commonly used laboratory tests, e-mail security and health record templates. The American Health Information Community is the private-public consortium charged with driving information technology adoption in healthcare. The group is chaired by HHS Sec. Mike …