Letters

Balancing Act

To the Editor:

Your Balancing Act department is a great idea. Its message is likely the most important in Family Practice Management. How about taking this section out of hiding and giving it some well-deserved prominence in the front or body of FPM?

Peter G. Teichman, MD
Martinsburg, W.Va.

Editor's note:
We have, in fact, deliberately given it a place of prominence. By placing it always just inside the back cover, we have made it the easiest part of the journal to find.

Medicine is about sacrifice

To the Editor:

Many articles about part-time practice or cutting back hours at the office are appearing in journals. The catch phrases of the day appear to be self-oriented -- "quality of life," "best of both worlds," "time to enjoy myself" and "more time for my family" are but a few.

Why did we go into medicine in the first place? Was it simply for job satisfaction? Was it for money and the material things it can buy? How about for knowledge and the power and control over others it brings? Maybe so. We sure don't seem to use words like "duty," "responsibility" and "self-sacrifice" to describe our practices.

I realize that medicine is a jealous mistress that would take all our time and effort if we allowed it, but sacrifice is part of what medicine is about. My wife and family have had to sacrifice too, sharing me with my patients and the community. But we're still together after 20 years, more solid than ever, and we're continuing our adventure.

"Care and Compassion available 1-4 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays" doesn't cut it for me. I need to consider the expectations of the good people of Minnesota who support the university at which I started learning the art of medicine. I think they deserve more.

William Shores, MD
St. Peter, Minn.

Until the lungs are removed ...

Editor's note:
The following letter is in response to recent FPM articles about voice-recognition software. See "Voice-Recognition Software: A Tool for Encounter Notes," FPM, February 1999, page 55, and "A Comparison of Voice-Recognition Programs," FPM, April 1999, page 48.

To the Editor:

To (I) have been using Tack initially speaking (Dragon Naturally Speaking) Medical Suite for approximately six months. A few (I feel) personally obligated to percent (present) how poorly the system actually works. I have read many articles suggesting how useful and amazingly natural the systems can work, but, unfortunately, most of these articles are misleading. It has been a struggle for me to maintain any consistent productivity from the software from the very beginning. In fact, it seems like a work (it worked) better initially that it has (than it is) now.

To avoid any liability of saying what (how I) actually feel about the software, (I) have simply decided to give an example of how poorly (it) works. He (You) can see already (how) the most simple words are either missed or mis- typed (mistyped). The claim that this is "true continue his (continuous) speech recognition" is simply wish for (wishful) thinking, aggressive advertising or flat outline (flat-out lying).

Nine months ago, we had (a) staffing problems (problem) in (and) decided to pursue one of the voice-activated systems. After several months of struggling to get both (the) hardware and the software activated, with I labor of (we finally got it up and) running about six months ago. Initially, it seems (seemed) like the system would be quite useful. However, because of numerous buttocks (bugs) and software difficulties, I feel the system is actually not only not burning (improving) beginning (but getting) worse.

I assure you but (that) I have not altered in 80 (any words) or phrases above, except to add the parenthetical explanations. I would recommend that anyone considering the voice-activated system use extreme caution. Waiting a few years until all of the lungs (bugs) are removed seems to be the most prudent option.

Randy Sevcik in the
(Randy Sevcik, MD)
Conrad, Iowa

Correction

In the July/August 1999 issue of Family Practice Management (Coding and Documentation, page 12), Kent Moore concurred with a reader's use of a -52 modifier with a preventive medicine visit code "when the visit is an abbreviated screening visit." He has learned that it is not appropriate, from a CPT perspective, to add a -52 modifier to a preventive medicine visit code.

We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.

Copyright © 1999 by the American Academy of Family Physicians.
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