Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Half of <Insert Your Medical Profession Here> Would Leave <Insert Your Medical Profession Here>???

This article from CNN reports on a recent survey revealing that half of all primary care physicians surveyed would leave their profession if they had an alternative.  While this statistic may be shocking to those outside of the medical community it probably comes as much less a surprise to those within the community.  As we continue to witness the death spiral of declining third party reimbursement from insurers while all costs of practice are rising it has become increasingly difficult for medical providers to maintain a sustainable practice.

At what degree of Crisis will we recognize that the current model of third party payment is failing and that it has to be corrected soon or we will once again reap the punishment of failing to recognize impending failure of a national system?

Thursday, November 13, 2008

CMS Testing Multiple PHR’s

An interesting post on zdnet discusses some of the goings on with regard to CMS and online PHR systems.  You can read the post here at Medicare Tests Multiple PHRs including Google.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Understanding and Ownership

Those that know me well and follow my various blog postings know that I am an adamant advocate that ownership of Physical Therapy services should solely be held by Physical Therapist licensees.  When one considers the myriad of problems and recent scandals impacting our profession including aberrant billing patterns and some that are outright fraudulent and the depth of ignorance regarding almost all practice related compliance it should be a shocking experience. 

I think the explanation of this situation and perhaps the single best defense of my position is summed up best when over one hundred years ago Upton Sinclair wrote "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."  Those who operate services as non-licensees are outside the reach of licensing boards and are thusly unable to be held accountable, it creates an environment whereby those licensees who work for them are at greater risk of exploitation.

Our development as a profession is fully contingent on attaining sole ownership.  Abdicating ownership means abdicating control and without control we will never be fully recognized as a fully developed profession.  Other professions such as physicians and lawyers have recognized this long ago and until we have embraced this concept we will continue to yearn for a recognition we don't yet deserve.