Are cash-only medical practices only limited to the wealthy?

When you think about it, how much care does the average patient really need? Over at Better Health, Val Jones writes that 75 percent of patients require an average of 3.5 office visits annually for all the medical care they need. That works out to about 1 hour of a physician’s time per year.

How much is that worth? Well, the going rate is about $300. For a year. Read more »

Hospitalists are here to stay, for good.

MedPage Today reports on a NEJM study, not surprisingly concluding that “hospitalists now account for nearly 40% of inpatient Medicare claims for general internist services, up from less than 10% in 1995.”

That’s a lot.

How will it affect primary care doctors, who increasingly are confined to the office? Well, it’s not a positive as you’d think.

“The well-intentioned Read more »

The study found that half the GPs involved said they had been able to reduce prescribed medication and the same number that their patients needed less frequent referral to hospital.

Two-fifths of patients reported an improvement in symptoms, 81% said their general health had improved and 55% that they had been able to reduce their use of painkillers.

The Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health was closely involved Read more »

That’s a question this case in the UK is trying the answer.

As Dr. Crippen, the crusty blogger who notes the inanities of the UK medical system, notes, extra-martial affairs are commonplace.

But should a physician be censured, effectively ending his medical career, for having a dangerous liaison?

“If every man and women in Britain who had an extra-marital affair were to be prevented from working,” writes Dr. Crippen, Read more »

Business principles are applied to American medicine to an extent found in no other country in the world.

Every procedure, office visit, or hospitalization is assigned a quantitative work value, known as relative value units, that is used to base revenue and salary decisions on.

Harvard physicians Pamela Hartzband and Jerome Groopman looks at how such a fiscal-based system affects medical decision making. The results are predictable.
Read more »

Medical student leaders are urging ministers to alleviate soaring debts if they wish to improve social mobility.

Louise McMenemy, a member of the BMA’s medical students committee and lead on widening participation in medicine, said: ‘The spectre of debt hangs over the government’s entire social mobility agenda. At present medical graduates leave university with 21,000 worth of debt on average, a figure that could Read more »

The Institute of Medicine recently recommended a requirement that medical and surgical residents have a minimum sleep period of 5 hours in any 24-hour work period, with a maximum shift length of 16 hours. This was a follow-up to the 2003 ruling which limited resident work-hours to 80 hours per week.

That is the focus of this week’s poll. Are the Institute of Medicine’s recommended restrictions on residents’ work hours good for medicine?
Read more »

What are the differences between the two generalist fields?

Academic internist Robert Centor gives his perspective, highlighting differences in philosophy, focus, program rigor, and the involvement of obstetrics and pediatrics.

I found the observation about the variability of family practice program’s rigor interesting, with Dr. Centor saying “the better programs do a wonderful job, but there remain too many Read more »