Currency of time

Age forces the recognition that time is the true currency of our lives. When people waste it for you, it is frustrating and angst producing. One of the underlying tragedies of physicians’ daily lives, especially in primary care, is the theft of our time, stolen away by the health care system.[read more]

malpractice suits

Sure, there are positive elements present in the medical malpractice system, but they are dwarfed and suffocated by the drawbacks. The self-serving arguments supporting the current system are far outweighed by the financial and emotional costs that innocent physicians unfairly bear. Tort reform should not be controversial.[read more]

Chief Customer Officer / shutterstock

Now that health reform seems here to stay, pharma companies are racing to get on the customer focus bandwagon with new Chief Customer Officer (CCO) positions. What remains to be seen is whether these CCO positions actually alter the practice of pharmaceutical marketing.[read more]

Relative Value Units

Do you understand Relative Value Units (RVUs) as they relate to Medicare reimbursement? RVU stands for Relative Value Unit and is currently used by Medicare to determine the amount of reimbursement to providers. RVUs are basically a way of standardizing and comparing service volumes across all continuums.[read more]

medical device marketing

As a medical device marketing consultant, Joe Hage has a LinkedIn Medical Devices Group that boasts over 220,000 members. He had some very interesting things to say about lead generation, developing a medical device marketing strategy, social media and web development for medical device companies.[read more]

technology & health behaviors / shutterstock

Changing how people take care of themselves (e.g., taking prescriptions, diet, adequate exercise) has been very difficult, and it will take more than technology. That having been said, here are four technological innovations that might have a fighting chance of changing behaviors.[read more]

Image: Flickr / Images Money

The government has said the public release of how $77 billion in federal dollars was doled out to more than 880,000 providers in 2012 through Medicare Part B services will give consumers insights to inform their healthcare decisions and potentially expose fraud. But the raw data doesn’t tell the whole story.[read more]

FDASIA Health IT Report

The FDA, the FCC and ONC issued a long-awaited joint report with a proposed strategy and recommendations for a risk-based framework for regulation of Health IT. The report identifies four key priority areas and outlines next steps to take in each area.[read more]

multi-screen marketing

Achieving marketing and advertising objectives is a matter of reaching the right audience with the right message by way of the right device at the right moment. Certainly multi-screen targeting is easier said than done. To help us sort through the cross-screen maze, Google provides some insightful stats about our new multi-screen world.[read more]

Telemedicine

It's time for a thoughtful discussion on one of the most controversial telemedicine questions of our current time. Is it safe and effective care for providers to evaluate and prescribe for patients that they’ve never met face-to-face? Join me in thinking through this question.[read more]

ICD-10 delay

ICD-10 was delayed once again as part of a bill that was meant to fix the physician reimbursement issues with Medicare. Incidentally, pushing out the date for ICD-10 implementation pleases many physicians. Some have gone so far as to say, on record, that ICD-10 lacks clinical value.[read more]

diabetes / shutterstock

Nearly 26 million Americans live with one of three types of diabetes – type 1, type 2 and gestational. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that if these trends continue, by 2050, one in three Americans will struggle with diabetes.[read more]