Articles
The New AMA President Answers Your Questions
Doctors and patients must make hard choices or face “the dark ages of medicine,” warns family physician Nancy Dickey, MD.
It's Time to Start Practicing Population-Based Health Care
You don't have to be part of an integrated delivery system to optimize care for populations of patients with common conditions.
When a Physician Practice Management Company Comes Calling
Do you know what to do if a PPMC shows interest in partnering with you and your practice?
Family Physicians and Nurse Practitioners — A Perfect Team
One upstate New York family practice has found collaborative practice a way to remain independent.
From the Editor
Where Do We Go From Here?
Think back even a few years: Would you have said that the AMA might elect a female president the same year it snowed in hell? Surely Nancy Dickey's election is a sign of significant change in the weather. If it's not exactly snowing in hell, at least the effects of global…
Opinion
The E/M Documentation Guidelines: Back to the Drawing Board
Nothing since the health care reform debate has created such ire or angst in the physician community as the proposed Documentation Guidelines for Evaluation and Management (E/M) Services. These guidelines were developed by HCFA and the AMA in concert with representatives of…
Letters
Ask FPM
Reimbursement Strategies
Changes Proposed for the E/M Documentation Guidelines
It's official. Implementation of the revised E/M documentation guidelines has been delayed to allow time for further changes. The announcement was made at a special fly-in meeting convened by the AMA on April 27. In a letter to AMA President Percy Wootton, MD, that was made…
Use Random Audits to Find Payment Problems
As you contract with more managed care plans and begin to see your adjustments climb, you need processes to help ensure that your practice gets paid for the work you do. One step your practice can take is to conduct periodic random audits of your reimbursement systems and…
Monitor
MONITOR
Primary care shortage questioned | Medicare slows payment of claims | Hospitalist group affiliates with ACP | Proposals simplify electronic claims | Kaiser-union pact: Nurses to evaluate quality of care
Office Suite
Promoting Your Staff Makes Good Financial Sense
Of the choices you make for your practice, hiring decisions are among the biggest. As you know, a great staff can help you succeed, and a poor one can shut you down. And with patient satisfaction increasingly becoming the primary yardstick health plans use to measure practices…
FP Stats
Sticking Up for Primary Care
Family medicine faculty have a high level of enthusiasm for primary care that their counterparts in general internal medicine apparently do not share. In a recent survey comparing faculty members' attitudes toward primary care, family medicine faculty were more likely to…