There are close to a quarter million primary care physicians in the U.S., more than any other individual specialty, and about half the total number of all specialists combined. Yet, somehow, primary care seems to lack the power and social influence necessary to chart its own professional course. As the availability and granularity of specialist physicians increased, the value proposition of a generalist primary care doctor seems to have become unclear to those who pay for medical services and to
Read More
How Will The Primary Care Model Evolve in 2015?
You may not be ready to admit it even to yourself, but you know it’s changing. Permanently. Some say it’s for the better. Others say it’s for the worse. Most don’t really care much one way or the other. After all, health care has been evolving and changing over thousands of years, and the experts best positioned to evaluate the health care turmoil of our times are yet to be born. Those of us who are now in the eye of the storm have an understandable tendency to analyze high velocity changes,
Read More
JASON Report: The Great American Experiment
The distinguished JASON group of anonymous scientists and academics that provides consulting services to the U.S. government on matters of defense science and technology, just published a sequel to the 2013 best seller, “A Robust Health Data Infrastructure”. The new report is titled “Data for Individual Health”, and it has two purposes. The first and foremost purpose is to backtrack on the searing criticism leveled at government efforts to promote health information technology, which evoked much
Read More
EHRs Should Automate the Business of Medicine
EHRs should automate the business of medicine and eventually the science of medicine, while protecting the art of medicine. Margalit Gur-Arie shares her insights.
By the time the next decade rolls in there will be no paper charts. There will probably still be paper floating around in various capacities, but there will be no one charting on paper. The term “charting” itself may become obsolete, like yonder or popinjay. The term EHR, which is what replaces the paper chart, won’t
Read More
Physicians: The Omnipotent Consumer of EHRs
According to the American Medical Association, there were approximately 685,000 physicians in patient care, post-residency, not employed by the federal government, in 2012. 60% of these physicians practiced in independent private practice, and 84% were working in small to medium size practices. Assuming that the trend to employment of doctors by health systems continued unabated to this day, over half of practicing physicians are still in private practice and the overwhelming majority
Read More
Value-Based Health Care is Antithetic to Patient-Centered Care
Value-based health care is antithetic to patient-centered care. Value-based health care is also diametrically opposed to excellence, transparency and competitive markets. And value-based health care is a shrewdly selected and disingenuously applied misnomer. Value-based pricing is not a health-care innovation. Value-based pricing is why a plastic cup filled with tepid beer costs $8 at the ballpark, why a pack of gum costs $2.50 at the airport and why an Under Armour pair of socks costs $15.
Read More
Why Did the U.S. Rank Last in the World’s Best Healthcare System Report?
The Commonwealth Fund just published its fourth Mirror, Mirror on the Wall study comparing the U.S. health care system with other countries, and as in all previous studies, we ranked as the absolutely worst health care system in the developed world, bar none. Yikes. The Commonwealth Fund studied many health care domains, and we didn’t rank in first place for anything. The best we managed to do is place a lackluster third in the subcategory of Effective Care. The United Kingdom, on the other
Read More
Is It Time We Stifle Innovation in Healthcare?
Should we stifle innovation in healthcare or should we attempt to disseminate between healthcare innovations that seems worthy? Margarit Gur-Arie explains.
Stifling innovation is a very bad thing. As a society it is incumbent upon us to let innovation breath free, prosper and multiply, because innovation is good for us. All innovation is good for us, even if it doesn’t look that way initially, because you never know when a seemingly useless innovation will spawn that one innovation that will
Read More
Brace Yourself for Price Transparency in Healthcare
It’s here. For the first time in 35 years (or 33, depending on which click bait headline you clicked on), the much anticipated data on Medicare payments to physicians, has been released to the public, on the historic date of April 9th, 2014.
Read More
2 Mantras That Never Fail to Materialize When EMRs are Discussed
Margalit Gur-Arie shares 2 EMR mantras that never fail to materialize when EHRs are discussed.
Read More
