• FEATURES

    Provider Sponsored Organizations: A Golden Opportunity in Medicare Managed Care

    Stephen C. Gleason, Jacque J. Sokolov, Christine Henshaw

    Physicians and other providers will soon have a chance to bypass the middleman and compete in managed Medicare.

    Patient-Centered Care for Better Patient Adherence

    Robert Lowes

    Help your patients become medical decision makers who take an active role in their own care.

    Change: Inevitable But Manageable

    William Jackson Epperson

    Do you feel you're losing control over your practice? Read how one family physician has learned to manage both planned and unexpected changes.

    Coping With Managed Care's Administrative Hassles

    John Spicer

    Feeling weighed down by details and paperwork? Here are some ideas for lightening the load of multiple managed care plans.

    EDITOR'S PAGE

    Just Being a Doctor

    Robert L. Edsall

    “Just let us be doctors!” The cry that begins our cover story this month probably calls forth echoes from the minds of many readers. Can anyone “just be a doctor” these days? Apparently not where managed care plays a large role, as the cover story suggests. And certainly not...

    EDITORIAL

    Variety: The Spice of Covered Lives

    William R. Phillips

    The current mantra of the Continuous Quality Improvement movement is, “Variation is the enemy of quality.” The gurus of CQI would warn that such a slogan simplifies their science, but many managed care organizations seem to operate on the principle that there is one best way...

    LETTERS

    And the survey says ...

    While we're on the subject

    Karl T. Dockray

    An ICD-9 cheat sheet

    Correction

    REIMBURSEMENT STRATEGIES

    The Truth and Consequences of Private Contracting

    Kent J. Moore

    To liberally paraphrase Winston Churchill, never have so many been so confused by something designed to affect so few. The “something” in question is the private-contracting provision of the 1997 Balanced Budget Act (BBA). That provision has been misunderstood, misinterpreted...

    Coding an Annual Assessment for a Nursing Home Patient

    Charles S. Colodny

    The situation: You check in on a patient who is a resident at the local nursing home. A year has passed since he became a resident, and it is time to conduct his annual assessment. The patient has multiple chronic health problems: Alzheimer-type dementia (AD); stable,...

    MONITOR

    MONITOR

    AMA seeks more input about documentation guidelines | Company takes new tiered approach to drug co-payments | Business groups trying to stop patients' rights bills | Minorities lead drop in applications to U.S. medical schools | Health benefit costs expected to rise, despite...

    OFFICE SUITE

    How to Evaluate Health Insurance Plans for Your Practice

    Bruce Mathews

    You and your staff no doubt spend a lot of time keeping straight the details of your patients' health insurance plans and trying to collect from them. As you know well, some are certainly better than others. But your patients aren't the only ones you want to have good health...

    The First Rule of Speechmaking: Keep Your Audience Awake

    Ellen J. Belzer

    As speakers, family physicians are in demand. Community groups ask you to help them understand our complex, ever-changing health care system. A local high school requests your insights on the medical profession at “career day.” A residency program needs an inservice on...

    MARKETING TIPS

    Education and Promotion: A Winning Combination

    Wanda Kelsey-Mendez

    Effective promotion of your practice is as close as the brochures on arthritis, breast cancer, diabetes and other topics displayed in your waiting room or the handout on childhood vaccines that you give to parents. Patient education is not only an important service to your...

    THE SALARIED FP

    Salaried Physicians: Managers in Disguise

    C. Carolyn Thiedke

    Regina Santos, MD, has a meeting this morning with the nurses in her practice. She has been dissatisfied with patient flow; she feels that the nurses' processes are inefficient and cause unnecessary delays. She has given the matter a lot of thought and wants to propose a way...

    FP STATS

    Managed Care Smiles on Primary Care

    Could managed care actually be boosting the incomes of primary care physicians? That's the story from a recent Ernst & Young survey, which found that primary care physicians averaged $136,000 last year in managed care environments, 5 percent more than their counterparts...



    Disclosure

    All editors and editorial advisory board members in a position to control content for this activity, FPM journal, are required to disclose any relevant financial relationships. View disclosures.



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