Healthcare Career Blog, Physician Blogs

Leapfrog’s Announces Top Hospitals for 2009

Author Healthcare Career Blogger | 15.12.2009 | Category Healthcare Career Blog, Hospitals, Locum Tenens, Physicians, Retired Physician, Surveys, healthcare reform, jobs

The Leapfrog Group released its 2009 list of the nation’s best hospitals. Leapfrog’s top hospitals are determined using information gathered from the organization’s free, voluntary hospital survey. The survey assesses hospitals based on criteria involving both safety and efficiency practices. Top hospitals must meet standards for Computerized Physician Order Entry systems (CPOE), which have been shown to reduce medication errors by 85%, as well as for ICU staffing and complex procedure performance. New to the survey this year are criteria regarding hospital efficiency; these criteria are based on the quality of patient outcomes, lengths of stay, re-admission rates, and occurrences of hospital-acquired infections.

The Leapfrog survey is intended to educate patients and medical providers, but is also used to initiate improvements in health care reliability, affordability, and safety. While hospitals are not required to participate in this survey, the Journal of the Joint Commission reports that the hospitals that choose to participate in the Leapfrog survey have lower mortality rates and better quality of care than those who decline to respond.

Among this year’s top hospitals are the Mayo Clinics in Rochester, MN, and Phoenix, AZ; various Kaiser Permanente Hospitals throughout California; University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore; Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA; and many more.

Not only can patients use the Leapfrog comparisons to be better informed when choosing a local top hospital, but medical practitioners can also use this survey and other data on the nation’s best hospitals in their own searches for new physician jobs.

Visit Candidate Direct to search for permanent or locum tenens job postings in some of the nation’s top hospitals.

HHS Regulations Updated to Include Notification of Patient Record Security Breaches

Author Healthcare Career Blogger | 17.09.2009 | Category Healthcare Career Blog, Hospitalist physician, Locum Tenens, Physicians, healthcare reform, jobs

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently updated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (commonly known as HIPAA). The new regulation requires healthcare providers and other covered entities to  notify patients if the confidentiality of their health records is breached. The new requirement is designed to increase consumer confidence in the personal security of electronic medical records, as the industry moves more and more data online. One way or another, the nature of  physician jobs is always changing.

Many physicians agree that paper record-keeping can be inefficient and can compromise the accuracy, speed and portability of patient care. However, there are major obstacles to conversion to digital record-keeping —  including cost and privacy issues. With the current administration in Washington pushing for electronic medical records, these concerns have moved front and center.

Not only are more patient records moving online, so too are physician’s professional records — including credentialing and peer review information. You and the various organizations with which you work should be taking measures to ensure the privacy of patient and staff information.  Locum tenens and hospitalists have a particular interest in electronic record keeping, due to the mobile nature of their jobs.

You can learn more about HHS privacy regulations here: http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/

Physicians Debate Healthcare Reform

Author Healthcare Career Blogger | 05.08.2009 | Category Physicians, healthcare reform

That the current state of the U.S. healthcare system is a problem, few will deny. The United States, which spends more money per capita on healthcare than any other country in the world, found itself a disappointing #37 on the World Health Organization’s 2000 rankings of world health systems. But the question remains: what can be done about it? And thus, the debate ensues.

As politicians debate President Obama’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, health professionals, as well, have a wide range of criticisms of the proposal. Some argue that the plan is nothing more than socialized medicine, while others push more to the left for a single-payer system.

The American Medical Association (AMA) announced its support of the healthcare bill this summer, stating that “without a bill that can pass the House, there will be no health reform this year.” The AMA recognizes that the plan is not perfect (the bill does not, for example, do enough to protect doctors from crippling malpractice suits), but it lauds the bill for its attempt to provide health coverage to all Americans regardless of age, financial status, or pre-existing conditions.

The AMA has since faced backlash, however, from the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, which has accused the AMA of selling out and has urged physicians to leave the country’s largest medical association. According to the AAPS, the current bill will result in longer patient lines and substandard care as doctors become “servants to the state, insurance companies, [and] hospitals.” Their argument, and the arguments of many who consider the plan to be socialized medicine, is that physicians will lose their autonomy and will be forced to provide less medical care for less money.

Advocates of a single-payer system, like Physicians for a National Health Program, refute this claim simply by saying, “What autonomy?” Physicians today are often caught in a maze of insurance company restrictions that impede their patient care. Supporters of the single-payer system blame the current system for the lack of doctor-patient relationships; as patients are forced to shift insurance companies, they are often also forced to change physicians, ultimately leading to deterioration in primary care. A single-payer system, they claim, would allow doctors to focus entirely on patient care without having to circumnavigate the insurance companies’ restrictions.

No proposed plan is going to be an immediate panacea to the myriad problems with the healthcare system, and no plan will ever be embraced by all physicians, but few can deny that not since FDR’s New Deal has healthcare reform seemed so close.

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Medical Students Weigh in on Healthcare Reform

Author Healthcare Career Blogger | 03.08.2009 | Category Medical Students, Medical doctor jobs, Physician Career Path, Physician Shortage, Physicians, Pre-Med Students, Video, healthcare reform

Like the doctors they aspire to be, medical students are not in total agreement on an ideal healthcare reform proposal. Many worry about the effect that reform will have on their chosen profession, others feel skeptically optimistic about the current bill, while still others feel that President Obama’s proposal is not enough.

A major personal concern of many medical and pre-medical students stems from the astronomical cost of medical school. Over 75% of medical students graduate with well over $100,000 of debt. The only thing that makes this cost a valid investment for many students is the fact that physician jobs salary are high enough to allow for repayment of those loans, but medical students and physicians alike worry about the effect that national healthcare reform will have on doctors’ salaries. Not only will salary reduction affect individual physicians trying to pay back medical school debt, but it is also likely to discourage future would-be physicians from making such an investment in the first place, leading to an even greater shortage of physicians.

Still, many medical students are optimistic about healthcare reform – if it is done right. One current student addresses the public’s fear of socialized medicine by saying that these fears have, ironically enough, “been realized in our privatized system […], with insurance companies and HMO’s dictating the care that can be provided and who can provide it.”

Medical student supporters of healthcare reform, including the American Medical Student Association, have a number of criteria and suggestions for a successful healthcare proposal, including:

• Coverage for all must actually mean coverage for all.  In order for healthcare reform to work, all patients should have access to all doctors, and no discrimination should exist against the elderly or against those with pre-existing health conditions.
• Transparency and accountability are necessities.  Insurance companies must be held accountable for their increasing costs.  Beyond that, insurance companies must not be allowed to deny claims for provider-prescribed care.
• There must be a greater focus on preventative care and cost-effective health care maintenance.  Great Britain, for example, rewards primary care physicians who maintain the health of their patients and who effect positive health changes in their patients (quitting smoking, eating healthier, starting a workout regimen, etc.).
• Incentives should be developed to encourage medical students to pursue primary care, rather than a more specialized field.  With the influx of patients expected from increased health insurance coverage, PCP’s will be in high demand.  Scholarships and loan repayment programs for medical students intending to focus on primary care will lessen the need to go into a high paying sub-specialty in order to pay back debt.

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Healthcare Reform Debate Heats Up

Author Healthcare Career Blogger | 29.07.2009 | Category Healthcare Career Blog, Physicians, Surveys, healthcare reform

While Congress, the President and the special interest groups duke it out on Capitol Hill, millions of voters (and healthcare consumers) anxiously look on. Physicians have a particular interest in how the healthcare debate turns out, with its implications for patient care, quality of professional and personal life, not to mention the inevitable bureaucratic changes. It’s a complicated issue, but if you had to tell us where you stand in twenty words or less, what would you say?