First, let me acknowledge that many billions of dollars are lost by Medicare each year for outright fraud. I have heard that drug kingpins in Florida have looked at this enterprise as being just as lucrative as selling drugs, but with less potential prison time. A RAC is a Recovery Audit...
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The PCMH pushers love to talk about care coordination. They believe the key to more cost-effective care is to have primary care practices hire care coordinators to keep track of patients. I asked the leader of a large integrated network what his care coordinators actually do. He said they mostly track...
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The American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation recently led an initiative to reduce unnecessary testing. It’s called the ChooseWisely campaign and can be reached at http://www.choosingwisely.org/ There were nine medical societies that participated. Some of you might have seen articles in NEJM and the Annals of Internal Medicine where people proposed...
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I was going to write a post about the spineless leadership of the AAFP and how they caved in to the RUC (relative value update committee — the ologist-dominated committee of the AMA that makes physician fee recommendations to CMS). Visualize the AAFP dog whimpering pathetically with its tail stuck firmly...
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