From the monthly archives:

November 2007

Profiting from the coding complexity

November 30, 2007

Courses at almost $1,000 a pop are moneymakers benefiting from the byzantine coding rules.

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Colostomy gone wrong

November 30, 2007

A malpractice suit alleging a botched colostomy reversal that led to “passing gas and liquid stool from the penis.”

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Coding complexity redux

November 30, 2007

Sometimes you need a math degree to analyze RVU values.

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JCAHO hoop of the week

November 30, 2007

“Sometimes I wish stupidity were painful.”

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Residents

November 30, 2007

Two approaches, with markedly different results.

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Medical school admissions

November 30, 2007

Some common-sense talk.

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Unsavory specialists

November 30, 2007

“Don’t refer to them in the future” isn’t really good advice for a PCP.

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"Standard of care changes every few years"

November 30, 2007

Precisely the problem with government regulation, which is slow to keep up.

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Extra time

November 30, 2007

Time spent on the patient outside the office visit is common, and often not compensated.

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PDAs for physicians

November 30, 2007

PDAs are going out of style. My Dell Axim broke a year ago, and I have yet to replace it. Clinical Cases with a couple of suggestions to replace your PDA.

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Hand wipes and alcohol abuse

November 30, 2007

Temptation of alcohol in the hospital?
The alcohol in infection-control hand wipes used in hospitals and nursing homes may entice alcoholics or be a risk for confused patients, researchers here found.
In a search of a toxicology database for poison-control reports related to children and adults exposed to alcohol hand wipes after their use became widespread, 66% [...]

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Daniel Carlat goes counter-detailing

November 29, 2007

“Dr. Drug Rep” is going on a mission to give evidence-based drug talks to physician offices:
I received many helpful suggestions for how to part with my “dirty thirty.” I’ve decided that the most logical solution is to donate time to “counter-detailing,” which is essentially the opposite of giving drug talks. Pioneered as “academic detailing” by [...]

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"10 Things Your Primary-Care Physician Won’t Tell You"

November 29, 2007

I was interviewed for this article in SmartMoney Magazine, which is now online:
Interest is so low that the number of primary-care internal medicine residency positions dropped by more than 50% in the past decade. “We’re not really getting the best and brightest in primary care,” says Kevin Pho, a Nashua, N.H., physician who writes the [...]

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Nosebite

November 29, 2007

Pretty nasty.

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How to write off a $1.2 million hospital bill

November 29, 2007

Get your story published in the WSJ.

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Grady Hospital: "The slowly-boiled frog"

November 29, 2007

If this is how the government treats a safety-net hospital, I’d hate to think what would happen if they were responsible for all our health care.

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