The Medicare Payment Advisory Committee (MedPAC) just released its annual report on Medicare expenditures. Congress technically votes on the fees that Medicare pays, but it created MedPAC to serve as its primary advisor. If MedPAC sounds familiar to some, it may be because of reports in the past of the American...
Read More »

A study in the latest Health Affairs took a snapshot of utilization and costs associated with retail clinics. These are the small clinics located in Wal-Mart, CVS, Walgreen’s and the like. They were touted by proponents as low-cost options for primary care. They are usually staffed by nurse practitioners or physician assistants....
Read More »

I’ve read several articles recently reporting on a shortage of geriatricians. The writers have some clear misunderstandings of who actually cares for our elderly and where they come from. Susan Jaffe writing for Kaiser Health News stated that the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) estimates that the nation will require 30,000 geriatricians...
Read More »

The Texas Academy of Family Physicians recently published a piece I wrote for them on the preliminary results of our P4 curricular innovations at my day job: the John Peter Smith Family Medicine residency. Briefly, the P4 project (Preparing the Personal Physician for Practice) was a national experiment where 14 family...
Read More »

As much as I have given the ologists and other members of the dysfunctional U.S. healthcare system a hard time in previous posts, it’s only fair that I call out bad family medicine as well. I have a great example. I recently saw patient who is relatively new to the area...
Read More »

All of the major family medicine organizations just released their vision for the future of family medicine called Health is Primary: Family Medicine for America’s Health. This report comes on the 10-year anniversary of the Future of Family Medicine Report. The report lists 7 core strategies: Family medicine’s leadership will collaborate...
Read More »

First, we are all so thankful that our family physician colleague Kent Brantly seems to be recovering from his Ebola infection. When his family left Liberia, they had to leave all of their possessions behind, which should have been burned by now. If you would like to donate to help him...
Read More »

I’m continuing my series on the reasons there are so few family physicians in the U.S. and why the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is a root cause of this deficit. My conclusions are based on recent research on the topic. This specific issue is a detail that actually...
Read More »

I’m continuing my series on the reasons there are so few family physicians in the U.S. and why the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is a root cause of this deficit. My conclusions are based on recent research on the topic. If you hired an accountant to do your...
Read More »

I’m continuing my series on the reasons there are so few family physicians in the U.S. and why the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is a root cause of this deficit. My conclusions are based on recent research on the topic. Have you ever wondered why doctors tell you...
Read More »