Friday, October 2, 2009
QD: News Every Day
ACP Internist's daily digest of primary care in the news continues with sudden coherence on Obamacare, prescription med fatalities and the trend of falling patient volume and procedures during the recession.
Health care reform
Overnight, Democrats and moderates in the Senate Finance Committee agreed to $400 billion in federal subsidies to defray premium costs for lower-income families and help small businesses offer coverage to their workers. Amendments will seek to let the states form their own public options and make health care affordable. But the compromise doesn't offer a permanent fix for the Sustainable Growth Rate. It could hurt physicians who are the biggest users and discourage them from taking on patients. And it still needs to merge with other bills.
If you're unclear which health care reform bill is which, the San Francisco Chronicle explains them.
In case you missed it:
Drug overdoses, mostly from prescription meds, overtook traffic accidents as the leading cause of death in some states.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation warns that not passing health care reform could hurt the states most of all.
Revenue in medical practices declined in 2008, possibly tied to smaller patient volumes and increasing bad debt due to patient financial hardship.
According to the "MGMA Cost Survey: 2009 Reports Based on 2008 Data," multispecialty group practices saw a 1.9% decrease in total medical revenue in 2008. (MGMA captures data on both multispecialty groups and single-specialty practices, but uses multispecialty data as a proxy for overall trends.)
Procedure volume fell 9.9% and patient volume shrunk 11.3% from 2006 to 2008. And bad debt in multispecialty group practices from fee-for-service charges increased 13% from 2006 to 2008, suggesting that patients may be having a harder time paying their medical bills.
In 2008, multispecialty practices cut overhead expenses 1.4%, largely by cutting support staff costs by 1.5%--the first decline in several years. Support staff make up 32% of medical practice expenses. While medical groups reduced support staff costs, their total worker count remained constant, indicating that employees may have gone without raises and bonuses or perhaps even suffered pay cuts.
Revenue by specialty:
Labels: drugs, health care reform, practice management, QD, recession
posted by Ryan DuBosar at
12:29 PM
ACP Internist hosted Grand Rounds on June 16, wrapping up the best of the medical blogosphere. Click here for the complete wrap-up.
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American Journal of Medicine
Also known as the Green Journal, the American Journal of Medicine publishes original clinical articles of interest to physicians in internal medicine and its subspecialities, both in academia and community-based practice.
Clinical Correlations
A collaborative medical blog started by Neil Shapiro, ACP Member, associate program director at New York University Medical Center's internal medicine residency program. Faculty, residents and students contribute case studies, mystery quizzes, news, commentary and more.
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EverythingHealth is designed to address the rapid changes in science, medicine, health and healing in the 21st Century.
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Getting Better is the continuation of Dr. Val Jones' previous blog at Revolution Health. It is devoted to helping people understand health issues from a balanced, scientifically sound perspective.
HealthHombre
A roundup of health policy news drawn from a database of hundreds of Web sites.
Interact MD
Michael Benjamin, ACP member, doesn't accept industry money so he can create an independent, clinician-reviewed space on the Internet for physicians to report and comment on the medical news of the day.
Kevin, MD
The alter ego of Kevin Pho, ACP Member, is the closest thing to royalty in the medical blog world.
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The Public Library of Science's open access materials include a blog.
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One of the most popular anonymous blogs written by a doctor.
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