eMatchPhysicians.com is proud to announce our new partnership with renowned immigration and nationality law firm, HOWARD | NASSIRI, P.C. (http://www.howardnassiri.com/), to provide immigration services to physicians of all specialties who desire to work or train in the United States. HOWARD | NASSIRI specializes in the unique immigration issues that physicians face, and skillfully counsels medical doctors in determining visa eligibility, evaluating designated healthcare shortage areas, submitting applications to the USCIS, preparing waiver applications, and designing long-term immigration strategies.

For more information about how eMatchPhysicians is helping medical doctors get work visas, click here.

Billian’s HealthDATA and Porter Research partnered to conduct a survey of hospital executives’ understanding of the HITECH Act.  In 2009, their research revealed that only 67% of the respondents described the impact of the new legislation to be moderate to significant.  However, in 2010 that number escalated to more than 80%.

Many of the hospitals who participated in the survey had adopted new technologies for their physicians and patients.  In fact, the number of respondents that had adopted these new IT solutions increased in 2010 by an average of 21%.  Some of those new programs include EHR, ePrescribing, and Computerized Physician Order Entry.  While one of the respondents’ biggest fears was that their hospitals would put important IT decisions on hold until funding was received, the survey results indicated that for every decision put on hold, two more were pushed through.

Respondents were also asked how much they agreed with certain concepts of the HITECH Act.  90% agreed with the adoption of EHR technology, but only 43% believe that the Act will insure that every American has an electronic health record by 2014.  Regardless, over 75% of respondents believe that the HITECH legislation will strengthen the health IT infrastructure, and 58% believe that it will improve overall efficiency and quality of the healthcare system.

The research shows that hospital executives are ready to meet the requirements of the new legislation.  Respondents believe that the HITECH Act will accelerate adoption of EHR and other technologies, but concerns still exist about the ultimate impact of these technologies on efficiency and quality of the healthcare system.

Read the full article at http://www.porterresearch.com/Resource_Center/Porter_White_Papers/The_Road_Traveled.html

Source:  “The Road Traveled: Providers’ Perceptions of ARRA Legislation from Inception to Meaningful Use”

In order to modernize our health system, physicians have to adopt and USE technology.  The HITECH Act, which involves the incorporation of electronic health records (EHR) is a major part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) legislation.

Billian’s HealthDATA and Porter Research conducted a 2 phased research program aimed at understanding providers’ perceptions of the HITECH Act.  The first survey was conducted in March and April 2009, with a follow up survey in January and February 2010.  IT-leaders, hospital executives, and department directors from 150 hospitals participated in this survey.

In 2009, 40% of respondents said they were knowledgeable about the details of the new legislation, and in 2010 those numbers jumped to 74%.  This statistic is also backed by the fact that in 2009, most of the respondents had relied on mainstream media, whereas in 2010 70% took it upon themselves to research the Act online.  The increase in the number of hospital executives who personally researched the new legislation reflects their concern over how the Act will affect their hospitals.  In fact, about 50% of the respondents in 2010 who felt knowledgeable about the ARRA claimed to have actually read the document itself.

The respondents who were surveyed were given a basic definition of EHR and Meaningful Use (refer to full article for definition).  30% of the respondents had her systems in place that met the requirements of the HITECH Act for electronic health records, however only 23% of those respondents have physicians or providers that are using EHR consistent with the requirements of the Early Meaningful Use Summary.

The respondents were then questioned about their concerns with the HITECH Act.  Concerns regarding funding decreased by 27% from 2009 to 2010.  There was also a slight decrease in concerns about government administration of the program, however concerns shot up drastically in 2010 about the the timetable hospitals are being given and their ability to meet the requirements of the HITECH Act.

80% of hospital executives surveyed said that they were knowledgeable of the Meaningful Use document issued by the CMC, and 45% of those respondents agreed with the requirements that were proposed.  The respondents’ biggest concerns in achieving meaningful use are the timeline that they are given as well as having the resources to accomplish meaningful use.  Almost half of the respondents felt that they would not receive enough funding, as they expect the government to cover less than a quarter of the total cost.  76% say they will have to pursue additional funding.  Smaller hospitals, however, are expected to receive more coverage estimated at half of their total costs.

Needless to say, hospitals of all sizes will be taking a hit financially in order comply with the ARRA.

Read the full article at
http://www.porterresearch.com/Resource_Center/Porter_White_Papers/The_Road_Traveled.html

Source:  “The Road Traveled: Providers’ Perceptions of ARRA Legislation from Inception to Meaningful Use”

There is a trend among physicians and hosptials that has become more and more prevalent since the 1990’s.  Physician groups are selling their practices to hospital systems more now than ever before.  According to the MGMA’s annual Physician Compensation and Production Survey, hospital-owned group practices grew from 25.6% in 2005 to 49.5% in 2008. In 2008, the number of hospital-owned practices exceeded physician-owned group practices for the first time ever.  This integration brings financial and management benefits to the physicians looking to join a larger system.  Hospitals and large health systems also benefit in an increase in capital along with the ability to offer more services to their communities.  Neither physicians nor hospitals can achieve optimization of patient care, capital, and consistency without one another.

Recently, ABC news released a list of the top 10 medical advances of the decade. Here is a summary of those ten advances.

1. Decoding of the Human Genome
While the decoding of the human genome is a large achievement in and of itself, the way in which this discovery is being used for medical science and bedside treatments is equally impressive. Gene therapies are being developed that will make a difference in nearly every medical field in the future.

2. Adoption of Information Technology
Doctors and other medical professionals are using computers, Blackberries, and other connected devices to look up vital treatment information and in other applications. This improvement in efficiency helps doctors to streamline their practices, have access to patient information on the go, and at a macro level allows the standardization of medical records through EHR’s.

3. Smoking Significantly Reduced
Smoking bans in restaurants, bars, and workplaces have been contributing factors in quitting for many smokers. The elimination of smoking in the workplace helped to improve the economy, according to many medical and economic experts. From a medical perspective, diseases related to smoking such as heart attack, stroke and lung disease will be less of a concern in a population that smokes less.

4. Heart Disease Deaths Reduced by 25%
The introduction of new and effective drug treatments for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and other conditions which affect heart health significantly reduced deaths from heart disease over the past decade.

5. Stem Cell Research
This controversial research may prove one day to be as valuable to medicine as genetic therapies. Given its controversial nature, it was severely limited in North America, but it was shown to arrest the progression of ALD, a deadly disease of the brain, by European researchers.

6. Targeted Cancer Therapy Medicines

Trastuzumab (Herceptin) and lapatinib (TyKerb) are medicines which target specific cancers of the breast that work effectively. It is thought that in time similar therapies can be developed for all specific types of cancers.

7. Combination Drug Therapy extends Survival Rates for HIV Sufferers
Between 2006 and 2008, the HIV death rate in the United States dropped by 10%. This was in direct correlation to new combination drug therapies being used in the field.

8. Surgical Techniques that Reduce Invasion Reduce Surgery Risk
New microsurgery methods for various kinds of surgery have reduced the risk for common surgeries significantly. Patients were back up and running within a few days from surgeries that used to have a recovery time of a month or longer.

9. Heart, Cancer Risk Discovered With Hormone Replacement Therapy
HRT was automatically debunked as a treatment method by various studies which proved that the treatment led to an increase in heart disease and cancer risk.

10. fMRI advances Study of Brain
A more focused version of MRI, fMRI allows researchers to map areas of the brain that they had no access to in the past.

While there are a lot of things we would like to prepare for, incentives and monetary reward await those who capitalize on opportunity. Here are some things that you should be considering for the near future.

Minimizing Your Risk

Every physician has malpractice insurance. Contact your insurance provider to find out how you can further reduce the risk of a malpractice lawsuit in your practice; they will have great tips for you on how you can minimize risk in the everyday operation of your practice.

One of the most important things you can do in order to minimize risk is patient follow-up. If patients have a major diagnosis or procedure performed, have your staff follow-up with a simple phone call. That way, if there are issues, you can sort them out before they fester and get out of control.

Electronic Health Records

Have your staff check to see what incentives you qualify for under the ARRA stimulus bill and apply for them or schedule your application for when they are accepting them. This will help to guide your plan for further development of your EHR strategy. The funds may help to pay for a new employee to focus on EHR implementation, or help to pay for the necessary equipment to get your health records in order.

Whether or not you are bullish on the idea of EHR’s, you can’t ignore the fact that they streamline physician workflow, thus improving the efficiency of your practice, and improve overall patient satisfaction.

Readiness Plan

New Orleans and Haiti are just two very large areas that have recently been devastated by natural disasters. Is your practice adequately insured against emergencies that may happen in your area, such as floods, hurricanes, or tornadoes? Do you have offsite computer backups for your vital practice records in case something happens to your office? Put these questions on the agenda for 2010; hopefully you’ll never need to know the answers to them, but you will thank yourself in the future if you do.

New physicians and experienced physicians continually wonder: How should I apply for jobs?  Should I go through a personal recruiter, search online, or contact hospitals directly?  Should I call groups in the communities in which I want to live?  Perhaps medical societies are the answer?

eMatchPhysicians has researched every avenue and compiled a step by step process for a successful physician job search.  Click here to access our full tutorial.

There’s been a lot happening in the world of bariatric surgery in Florida in just the first couple of weeks of the New Year.

A graduate student in obesity research at the University of South Florida, Barbara Hansen, has made some key breakthroughs on why some of us stay fit while some of us get fat. Hansen has been feeding a colony of rhesus monkeys the same heart-healthy diet for decades and giving them the same amount of exercise. The results? Some are thin, while others are fat, much like people.

Hansen has spent her career challenging traditional beliefs about obesity. She hates fad diets and believes that there really are genetic triggers that make some people obese rather than skinny. To her, the key is finding those triggers rather than controlling diet and exercise. Hansen also believes that bariatric surgery is one of the best methods available to control weight for the morbidly obese.

There is also the new bariatric program website at the Lee Memorial Health System. The whole point of the new website is to put as much information into a prospective patient’s hands as possible. The information doesn’t end there; it is also meant as a helpful support to patients who have had bariatric surgery somewhere else and have moved into the Tampa-Miami corridor which Lee Memorial operates out of. Lee is the fifth largest community-owned health system in the United States and they support a number of facilities across South Florida.

According to Indeed.com, the pay scale for doctors in Massachusetts bombed in 2009 but recovered nicely to the point where 2010 is beginning with an increase over 2008’s pay scales. Family practice physicians in Massachusetts can expect a median salary of $95,000.

In 2009, the AAFP was dismayed to learn that Harvard Medical School had cut funding for its primary care program. The state is experiencing a severe shortage of primary care doctors and the lack of a strong primary care program at Harvard will only encourage new medical students to specialize.

The state has uses a universal health care model for insurance that relies on primary care physicians which has caused those physicians to be much more in demand since the legislation was put in place in 2006. It has been put forward in studies including this one that the state of primary care in Massachusetts will soon be the state of health care in the US considering the new health care reforms that are to be enacted.  The linked study proposes community health centers as a solution to the primary care physician training problem. More than 42% of community health centers now provide primary care physician training, but do not receive funding for this training as university medical health centers do.

The “meaningful use” criteria for EHR subsidies was released just before the New Year. The first set defines how the government determines if an organization qualifies for subsidy money based on how they use their electronic medical records. The second set outlines the standardization of EHR data, which gives a template on what your electronic health records should look like in order for your organization to qualify for the subsidy cash.

These are proposed regulations, and you have sixty days to comment on them before they are made into law. Take a good look at the areas that will affect your organization. In the New Year, you may want to make this a priority task for your IT department and management team. The amount of money at stake is definitely worth taking the time to review the new sets of criteria.

Meaningful Use Criteria
The first set of regulations which governs how electronic medical records are used within your organization.

EHR Standardization Requirements
The second set of regulations which governs how EHR’s need to look in order to qualify for subsidy money.

The first draft of the EHR regulations was released in June of 2009; these regulations are the result of months of consultation.

WebMD recently deployed a new app for the iPhone and the iPod Touch called Medscape Mobile. The application allows you to instantly access prescription drug information and interactions, contact information for nearly all the healthcare providers in the US, and a medical news service. Medscape Mobile is targeted especially for physicians rather than the general public, allowing doctors to reach the information that they need quickly and on-the-go.

You can search the database by drug name or drug class. The interaction database deals with both other drugs and herbal supplements. Over 6000 medications are covered, plus herbal remedies.

You can complete CME’s on the go in over thirty specialty areas. Your CME credits are saved on the application, allowing you to easily refer back to them.

The drug database is continually updated, with notifications instantly pushed to the application on any recommendation changes when they become available. You can also save common drugs to your own personal “Saved” list to access your favourites instantly.   

In addition, the medical community can point their mobile browser to mobile.medscape.com for up-to-the-minute medical news and tips, no matter what smart phone they are using.

The application is available at no cost through the Apple AppStore. For more information visit Medscape. There is also a toll free number available to walk you through installation if you need it.

In a move that seems to many to be going over the edge of what is reasonable, a Maryland court recently approved federal stimulus funds to be used for “secret shoppers” that monitor the hand washing habits, among other things, of health professionals in various medical organizations across the state. Forty-five out of Maryland’s forty-seven acute care hospitals have joined the initiative.

While such moves do a lot to inspire the confidence of possible patients, they may do more to erode the morale of medical workers. This is the first time that such an initiative has been established with federal funding in the US.

Patient safety professionals have implemented a host of various surveillance tactics to keep tabs on doctors, such as motion sensors and RFID chips. However, even patient safety advocates acknowledge that such measures have to be put in place sensitively and used in a non-punitive manner in order to avoid a complete revolt on the part of those who are being monitored.

On the flip side, there is data that shows that such monitoring works. The company Arrowsight is one of the many suppliers of monitoring equipment, including video cameras that are monitored on handwashing stations. An Arrowsight 2007 test project conducted at an ambulatory surgery center with around 20 workers saw a huge jump in hand hygiene use from 35% to more than 90% within two months of having the equipment installed.

Arrowsight argues that their monitoring also allows participating organizations to reward consistently high standards among its staff that may have gone unrewarded before. 

While the Maryland initiative is voluntary, sometimes surveillance is not voluntary. Rhode Island State Hospital received a court order to install cameras in operating rooms after several malpractice suits were brought against the organization within a short time period. It can be argued that proactive installation of such equipment is in the best interest of the organizations involved given that they can then provide up to the second video of procedures in which malpractice is alleged.

Whatever our personal opinions are on the subject, it looks like insurance companies and courtrooms may make some surveillance equipment mandatory in the years to come. The trick is to find a balance that physicians can live with while satisfying the requirements of patient safety experts, insurance companies, and the courts.

While the general feeling is to hunker down and wait for the recession to be over, the best predictions show that America will not start to recover at the consumer level until the fall of 2010. We think you’ll agree that this is a gap in income that any physician can still afford. What can you do to be proactive about making an income and helping your patients out during the recession?

1. Cut Back on Staff

Take a hard and cold look at your administrative staff. Are there people there who are just punching the clock that you’ve been ignoring because they are the cousin of a friend? Now is the time to cut them loose.

2. Contact All Of Your Patients

Send out a letter, an e-mail newsletter, or both letting your patients know that you are flexible in these times of financial hardships. How flexible is up to you; perhaps you want to arrange a monthly payment plan or some other form of deferred payment. Small discounts on checkups may be enough to get any fence-sitters into the clinic.

3. Contact Problem Patients by Phone

If you have patients that you know do not have coverage or may have recently lost their coverage, have your staff contact them and see if they can work out a customized plan with them that is tailored to their needs. You’ll generally find out about these as a result of the letter campaign.

4. List Helpful Organizations On Your Website

In your letter, e-mail newsletter, and website you may want to include a list of organizations that will assist with the costs of health care and prescription medications. Get in touch with your pharma company representatives and try to get samples out of them that you can give to needier patients. They will likely have a plan in place to help your patients as well. Some of these organizations can be found here.

Being proactive in this time of crisis will not just help your patients, but it will cement your relationship with your patients after the recession is over and drive your patient referrals through the roof.

For more tips see this article at Physician’s News.