By Lucia Francesca Bruno, J.D., LL.M., M.B.A.

For the past century, information technology has reinvented the familiar and revolutionized the art of medicine.  As health care professionals struggle to keep pace with an ever-changing and consolidating industry, traditional forms of health care have succumbed to modern technology and fiscal constraints.  No longer are patients and providers afforded the luxury of being in the same place at the same time.  Recent developments in patient-service delivery systems have transformed the doctor/patient relationship; paving the way for advances in telemedicine and the credentialing and privileging …

Among the issues on Congress’ must-do list is the “doc fix” – finding billions of dollars needed to avert drastic rate cuts for physicians who treat Medicare’s 48 million beneficiaries.

For doctors, the nail-biter has become a familiar but frustrating rite. Lawmakers invariably defer the cuts prescribed by a 1997 reimbursement formula, which everyone agrees is broken beyond repair. But the deferrals are temporary, and the doc fix has become increasingly difficult to push through a divided and deficit-wary Congress. In 2010, Congress delayed scheduled cuts five times, with the longest …

By Erika Stewart

Health care reform will make huge changes in the way insurance companies do business, but most of that will not go into effect right away. Provisions that will help most Americans in 2012 affect policies that were purchased after March 13, 2010.

Under the new laws, health insurance companies cannot:

Refuse to cover children under age 19 who have a pre-existing condition
Impose a lifetime limit
Cancel a policy unless they can prove fraudulent information was given
Fail to provide an appeal process for denied claims

New insurance policies must now include reasonable preventive …

By Michelle Andrews

Credit card companies, airlines and hotels all have customer loyalty programs. Maybe it was only a matter of time before hospitals got in on the act.

A growing number of hospitals are seeking to attract new patients and keep existing one by offering them an array of perks, from free parking and gift-shop discounts to wellness seminars and health screenings. Some of the most popular programs are social mixers that have nothing to do with health care. Field trip to a casino, anyone?

It’s all part of a changing competitive …

By Jen Abraczinskas and Jeffrey Brenner, MD

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There is a lot of buzz about reducing hospital readmissions.  But what does a readmission look like?  And what will it take to provide the care needed to avoid readmissions?

We arrived at the ICU to find our patient sedated and intubated. Yet only 10 days earlier Mrs. P was strong enough to navigate the halls in her wheel chair, had her diabetes and COPD under control and was taking her medications for bipolar disorder. Mrs. P was discharged with …

By  Louis J. Goodman and Timothy B. Norbeck 

This year promises to be a watershed year for healthcare in general, and for patients and physicians, in particular.  No matter how the U.S. Supreme Court determines the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), 2012 will be a crucial turning point in the delivery of healthcare.

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During the Congressional passage of the PPACA, White House advisors acknowledged that the economic forces in the legislation would accelerate physician employment by hospitals and larger physician …

By Mark Crockett, MD

In the era of accountable care, you’ll notice that many hospitals and health systems are already driving towards more collaborative workflow. The integrated delivery network (IDN) is changing significantly, and for the better. But in high-acuity care areas, like the emergency department (ED), the challenge of treating patients more holistically in what is already a fast-paced environment is concerning for physicians evaluating the pay-for-performance model.

In today’s ED, patients may enter with a chronic condition that could be better managed by a primary care physician (PCP), but because …

By Michelle Andrews

As obesity among young people continues to rise, a growing number of clinicians and researchers say that weight-loss surgery may be their best chance to take off significant weight and either correct or avoid conditions like diabetes and heart disease, which often go hand-in-hand with obesity. But although health plans frequently cover bariatric surgery in adults, insurance coverage for the procedure in patients under age 18 is spotty.

Experts in pediatric obesity say that caution is warranted and that insurers shouldn’t just rubber-stamp such surgery in adolescents. But they …

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By Michael Kline, CPA

As the year draws to a close, it is time for medical practices and medical professionals to review the current year’s financial activity and determine if any tax planning opportunities are available to help reduce their overall tax burden. Below are some tax planning tips that can be utilized before year-end that can greatly reduce your tax burden.

Depreciation

The biggest and easiest 2011 tax-saving opportunity is the accelerated depreciation available until the end of 2011. For many physicians, the purchasing of new …

By David Green

Last June, Andemarian T. Beyene, 36-year-old man with tracheal cancer received a special gift:  a brand new trachea, made from a synthetic scaffold seeded with his own stem cells.  Following this surgery—the first of its kind—he made a full recovery and was discharged from the hospital four weeks later.  The procedure made international headlines, and shone a much-needed spotlight on two important problems that it might help in part to resolve:  long wait times for organ transplants, and immune rejection of implanted organs.  In what follows, we offer …