Practice Management

The launch of the Health Care Notification Network (HCNN), a new online network to notify physicians of drug safety alerts, was recently announced.

According to an insurer "report card" released by the AMA, insurers' claim payments are often late and inaccurate.

A nurse employed by a clinic was charged for allegedly wrongfully disclosing a patient's protected health information and using it for personal gain and malicious intent.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologist urge support of ACOG's "Health Care for Women, Health Care for All" campaign.

Majority of physicians do not use EHRs.

Recommendations to help audit-proof your ultrasound practice.

Some doctors are doing it successfully, but costs and logistics can be a challenge.

ACOG has launched a new program designed to help more physicians send prescriptions to pharmacies electronically.

Medical malpractice insurance premiums may fall in the near future.

This year, physicians can expect to find it easier to get medical malpractice insurance and to pay lower rates for it than in the past.

Number of disciplinary actions against doctors fell for the third straight year in 2007.

Clinicians surveyed 1,039 women who delivered at Robert Wood Johnson University, ob/gyn division regarding what women want from an ob/gyn practice.

Contemporary OBGYN offers several practical tools to help solve everyday problems, including a a more evidence-based search engine, a coding counselor, and a guide to pay for performance programs.

The government, nonprofit hospitals, insurers, and technology companies have been striving to get doctors and patients to embrace electronic and personal health records.

In a survey of faculty and resident physicians at three teaching hospitals, researchers found that 92% of 338 respondents would report a hypothetical error it it resulted in major harm.

Here's how to dissect EHR bids to make sure you're getting the best deal.

Recent articles attest to a growing interest in an alternative way to provide reimbursement for health-care services in both the United States and Great Britain. Individual physicians, multispecialty groups, and hospitals are rewarded for meeting pre-established quality and/or expense targets for their services.

At some point you may need to consider merging the practice into a hospital or larger group. Like all processses of growth, merging medical practices can involve risk and a certain amount of pain. Here's how to prepare yourself for the transition.

Think of this legal expert's advice as your personal GPS for deftly navigating a maze of employment law challenges and preventing costly litigation.

To preserve or enhance your income, you need to master the local medical marketplace.

Although there are many advantages of solo practices, including total autonomy and not having to compromise in the practice's decisions or share in its successes, for me the disadvantages were much greater.

The Internet has empowered individuals who can now access a huge treasure chest of information quickly. This new age has extraordinary implications for ob/gyns.

We need to define shift mentality simply as a time commitment, not as a measure of our level of care.

The stiff-upper-lip approach to dealing with medical errors doesn't help your practice, your patients, or you.

Tempted to tell patients when you've made an error but afraid that too much honesty isn't the best policy? Here's how to do it safely.

In eleventh-hour negotiations before Congress ended its session last year, legislators found funding to prevent a scheduled 5% cut in Medicare reimbursements to physicians and provide additional payment to those who report quality measures. While the reprieve is good news for 2007, it will not roll over into 2008. Instead, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the recent tax and health bill will result in a 10% cut in Medicare payment rates next year, according to Modern Healthcare (1/8/2007).

Despite efforts in 2006 to reconcile two significantly different Senate and House bills on health information technology, Congress this year hopes to create new legislation that both chambers can agree on. And the new Congress-with a Democratic majority-";will likely pay a large part in determining how information technology priorities will be handled," reported American Medical News (1/1-8/2007).

Information about how well pay-for-performance programs are doing within commercial HMOs might help the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is considering adopting this approach for Medicare reimbursement. To that end, Boston researchers conducted a survey of 252 HMOs from 41 metropolitan areas across the country to identify the traits of these incentive programs.

Will the employers-physicians, hospitals or other covered entities-also be held accountable and subject to prosecution? That's what a 2005 Department of Justice memo seemed to imply.

Thanks to a ruling by Michigan's Supreme Court, physicians in the state may now sue hospitals and peer review committees for wrongful peer review. The high court's ruling overturns almost 25-year-old case law, which kept courts from getting involved in hospitals' staffing decisions because of its lack of expertise. As a result, physicians' claims of unfair peer review were often rejected.