By Thomas Reinke

The American Cancer Society reports there will be about 1,479,000 new cancer cases in 2009 and the five year survival rate for all cancers has reached 66%, up from 50% in 1977. Since the short term survival rate is higher, the number of living cancer patients will grow by over 1,000,000 people this year, surpassing 12 million.
Cancer survivorship is receiving more attention, not only because of the substantial number of ongoing patients but also because of recognized shortcomings in comprehensive follow-up care. In response, the Ft. Washington based …

By Steve Goodman
A patient walks into your office, even for the first time, and instead of being handed reams of forms to fill out – your receptionist glances at her computer, smiles and says “Hello Mr. Jones, the doctor will be right with you…” For more than 10 years that has been the promise of EMR – electronic medical records. The technology exists, and many practitioners have systems in place and are reaping the benefits – but how close are we to universal acceptance and ubiquitous use of EMRs throughout …

Central to the nation’s health care reform agenda is the principle of value-based reform – restructuring provider payment incentives to control volume growth and to optimize efficiency, quality and access. Four value-based payment methodologies are currently receiving considerable attention from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), and may shape physician reimbursement in the near future: bundled payments, gainsharing, the use of the medical home to coordinate care, and pay-for-performance arrangements. This month, bundled payment pilots are being launched around the country. …

As physicians, hospitals and payors continue to ramp up their efforts to reduce preventable adverse medical events, relatively little attention has been paid to a moment in the care process when the patient is particularly vulnerable: the hospital discharge.

Moving to the ICD-10 code sets may be the most complex change for the U.S. health care delivery system in decades, requiring massive system and workflow changes, including coordinated actions among medical groups, their vendors and health plans.

Physicians play a central role: helping the patient redefine success. Encouraging overweight and obese patients to sustain a modest, but realistic weight loss of only a few pounds can bring significant health improvement even in the absence of much cosmetic change.

The health care overhaul debate appears to have moved beyond how to expand health insurance to cover all Americans and how to reduce health care spending, as two separate questions. The focus now is working out details of how to structure incentives appropriately to optimize cost, quality and access.

Health plans, provider groups and the information technology sector are collaborating on ways to standardize some administrative tasks such as credentialing and patient benefit determination, and to expedite other tasks by replacing paper-based data exchange with electronic tools.

The connection of medical liability premium subsidies to health insurance expansion has led to a political impasse, which could cost Pa. health care providers billions of dollars over the next ten years and severely impair efforts to recruit physicians to the state for years to come.

Reality has outpaced the debate over nurse practitioner autonomy and scope of practice, given the intensifying shortage of primary care providers and health care workforce demands that place a premium on collaboration with physicians.