JANUARY 2000

What challenges and opportunities await in the next few years? Here's the answer, from 14 perspectives.

Tomorrow's family physicians need new knowledge and skills to help them be old-fashioned family doctors.

Hold on to your heritage as a family physician. It may save the health care system, or at least save your patient from it.

As patients shoulder a larger share of their own health care costs, they'll expect more from physicians — and reward those who meet their expectations.

At this point, the world seems to be divided into two camps: those who believe that 1,999 years are enough for two millennia and those who believe that we're not quite finished with the second millennium yet. If, like me, you find yourself in the second camp, there's good news…

Codes for emergency and critical care, lab panels and immunizations are noteworthy.

Workers' compensation visits | Same-day office visit and hospital admission | Sharing a global maternity care code | Blood gases interpretation | Hospital discharge and nursing home admission | Initial inpatient care not provided by the admitting physician

IOM calls for system-wide changes to prevent errors | Medicare finalizes 2000 fee schedule | New physicians frustrated by coding, managed care, journal deluge | Uncertainty continues as health systems seek workable models | Residents can unionize — and strike | Physician…

Even one minute of counseling can inspire your patients to give up smoking.

House calls | Y2K and dinosaurs | Business 101

While designing a Web site for a community-based program for the frail elderly, I recently had the opportunity to review dozens of Web sites aimed at the needs of seniors and their family members. Two of the best sites I found are www.alz.org and www.alzheimers.com.

Emerging Internet technologies will enable family physicians to benefit from less complicated, less expensive software applications.

Rewarding a physician executive | Compensation for collecting capitation payments | Nonprofit family practice?

Successful negotiation often depends on recognizing the games people play and determining how you will react to them.

Many people don't realize how out of kilter their lives have become until a crisis hits. That's what happened to this young physician.