By Lynn Lucas-Fehm, MD, JD
When the AMA was formed in 1847, the founders could not have imagined how health care delivery would change in the ensuing 150 years. The goals of the 19th century medical profession were ambitious but clear – to assure that the highest standards of excellence became the foundation for the practice of medicine.

At the first meeting of the AMA, the delegates developed policies by introducing, debating, amending and ultimately passing resolutions.  One example was the policy establishing the requirement for “gentlemen” entering the profession:

Resolved, that this …

By Dr. Michael West

Two classes of physicians are slowly forming, those who use electronic medical records and digital mobile technology and those who stick with paper charts. You might call these the digital haves and the digital have-nots.

No one among my friends and colleagues has yet pooh-pooh’d the idea of mobile tech, but I admit that the mobile tech crowd is still fairly small in the world of electronic healthcare. The bottom line is that most doctors are still on paper charts.

In my case, though, my EMR and mobile technology are …

By Lynn Lucas-Fehm, MD, JD

Most of us recall the literary character Dr. Watson who served as the steadfast confidant, supporter, physician and assistant to the brilliant detective Sherlock Holmes.  Now there is a new Watson in our midst, an artificial intelligence computer developed by IBM and named after IBM’s first president Thomas J. Watson.

After handily defeating the formidable human Jeopardy champions, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, Watson’s developers have expanded the computer’s medical databases to create what may become the ultimate digital collection of medical information. However, what truly sets …

Larry C. Kerpelman, Ph.D.

As a result of a freak fall while jogging, my wife, Joanie, sustained a subdural hematoma.  It took three emergency room visits, two hospitalizations, one neurosurgery, and several months of rehabilitation before she regained her lost capacities. During her first hospitalization, we became acquainted with the hospitalist’s role which, while not new in the United States, was new to us.  In the book I wrote about our experience with her injury, treatment, rehabilitation, and recovery, I included a commentary on the hospitalist phenomenon as we experienced it …

[caption id="attachment_4056" align="alignleft" width="118" caption="Dr. Hal Scherz"][/caption]

By Hal Scherz, MD

It never ceases to astonish me how ill informed my colleagues are about what is currently going on in healthcare. I recently sat in a board meeting of a physician- hospital organization and the topic being discussed was accountable care organizations (ACOs). The doctor sitting next to me leaned over and asked me what an ACO was. This is a board member representing 800 physicians in contract negotiations with insurance companies!

Unfortunately, he is not an outlier. Too many of us just …

[caption id="attachment_4056" align="alignleft" width="132" caption="Dr. Hal Scherz"][/caption]

By Hal C. Scherz, MD

 

Recently, I returned to Washington DC for the 11th time in two years, with a group of doctors from Docs 4 Patient Care. It was a very busy week in DC. As always, there were groups from around the country who came to Congress to advocate for their interests, including a large group of orthopedic surgeons. The most pressing issue that week was an impending government shutdown over the budget. You can imagine how distracted the Congressmen and Senators were …

[caption id="attachment_3980" align="alignleft" width="251" caption="The health care law recently passed the one year mark. Opinions are mixed. (Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)"][/caption]

By Hal C. Scherz, MD

Twelve months after the passage of one of the most controversial laws in American history, healthcare is still an unsettled issue. Never before has a president needed to go around the country to defend and sell a bill that he signed into law. America has been subjected to a law that over 1000 groups, representing 2.4 million people has been exempted from because …

By Hal C. Scherz MD

There is a truism that every physician needs to constantly remind themselves of; there is no healthcare without doctors. So why do so many of us feel so powerless and why are so many of us unwilling to do something about it?

Most of us do what we do professionally because we enjoy helping people. That is our collective strength but also our weakness. What we do is special, but other entities have staked out their “turf” in our professional world; the government, insurance companies, and …

By Congressman Phil Gingrey, M.D. (GA-11)

It is estimated that one in every ten dollars spent within the health care system will be used on defensive medicine and frivolous lawsuits this year. This is due in part to investors and hedge funds seizing on medical liability lawsuits in order to reap the rewards that should be going directly to injured patients. The New York Times recently reported that nearly $1 billion will be spent this year on these meritless suits, resulting in the exploitation of countless patients by lawyers and their …

By Michelle Andrews
Kaiser Health News

In a new book, “Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health,” Dartmouth researchers and physicians H. Gilbert Welch, Lisa Schwartz and Steven Woloshin argue that the medical establishment’s embrace of early diagnosis and treatment as the key to keeping people healthy actually does the opposite.

When doctors order screenings or tests for people who have no symptoms, then diagnose them with illnesses, that’s often overdiagnosis, these authors maintain. Since many of the patients will never develop …