Posts Tagged ‘Health care’

Shortage of Primary Care Physicians in Massachusetts

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

Today’s Wall St Journal has an editorial entitled, “The Failure of RomneyCare”.  It contains some fascinating statistics about , the average physician availability in the Bay State.  In fact, the Massachusetts Medical Society refers to the situation as a “critical shortage” of primary care physicians.  “56% of Massachusetts internal medicine physicians no longer are accepting new patients according to a 2009 physician work-force study conducted by the Massachusetts Medical Society.  For new patients who do get an appointment with a primary-care doctor, the waiting time is 44 days… ”

Dr. Sandra Schneider, the vice president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, told the Boston Globe last April,  “Just because you have insurance doesn’t mean there’s a physician who can see you.”

Once again the issues are pretty clear.  Our ongoing medical issues are centered on access and cost containment.

Primary Care Physicians Cut Back Hours

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

You need to read this.  Keep in mind that if healthcare passes, it does not create more doctors.  It does not automatically give people access to medical professionals.  It does give them the means to pay for it, if they can find it.  Unfortunately, the shortage of doctors grows.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35545561/ns/health-health_care/from/ET

What is Capitation?

Friday, February 19th, 2010

In U.S. health services, capitation refers to a fixed “per capita” amount that is paid to a hospital, clinic or doctor for each person served.  It is the basis for the Health Maintenance Organization (HMO).  You collect a flat fee to cover a certain number of lives and you hope that you have collected enough to do the job.  In fact, you hope you have collected enough to do the job and still have some left over for profit.  I will try to tie all of these health models together in a future blog.

I wrecked my car, can I get it insured?

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

No sorry.  You have to buy the insurance before the car is wrecked.  The same is true for buying homeowners insurance after the fire.  The wrecked car and the burnt house have what are called “preexisting conditions”.  If the car insurance company agreed to fix uninsured cars after the wreck, they would go broke.  Does anyone actually doubt this???  Yet, in Washington, they say health insurers are evil for refusing to insure after the fact  for preexisting health issues.  The original plan was to have a mandate for all Americans to purchase health insurance.  That made sense.  There would be no conditions that exist prior to owning health insurance because everyone would already own it.  The insurance companies, seeing an opportunity to sell policies to the uninsured signed on.  Now, the mandate is either dead, or the penalty too weak to enforce the mandate.  So the insurance companies are out and we’re back to, “I wrecked my car, can I get it insured?”

EHR, Electronic Health Records

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

Here is an interesting article on EHR from a major health insurance company.  http://coventryhealthcare.com/emerging-issues/PersonalHealthInformation/index.htm

What are CPT codes?

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

CPT or Common Procedural Terminology codes are the basis for reimbursement in our medical system and must be understood in order to comprehend the health care debate.  Here is a link to a good informational site.

CPT Codes Information and Module