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Dr. Jayant Patel trained at the University of Rochester in New York and was called brilliant during that training. He was disciplined during the training for not examining patients prior to surgery. He then went to Portland, Oregon to work at Kaiser. The Board Certified surgeon had his hospital privileges restricted for 79 complaints and was required to have a second opinion for all complicated cases. The state also began an investigation and extended the requirement for all cases in the state. He left Kaiser in 2001 and went to Australia to become a surgeon but did not tell anyone about his checkered past. Apparently no one in Australia has ever heard of checking on their applicants. He was written up for disruptive behavior and sterility problems along with 67 deaths. He has now left the country and no one knows where he is. His Oregon license has been suspended and his New York license was surrendered. Top
How can a hospital operate if it has no CEO, no COO, and no CNO. The hospital is affiliated with a medical school that has no president, dean or provost and half of the department chairs are temps. I am of course describing my favorite hospital, Drew/King of LA. The hospital also has 200 position open including 20 physician slots and 25 physician have been fired. They continue to lose about 7 people per month.
Parkland Hospital is another public hospital that hires civil servants and now is paying for it literally. The employees did such a bad job of registering patients that Parkland is losing money it is entitled to but will not receive. If all the boxes are not filled out correctly, the Medicaid people will not pay and Parkland then must cover its shortfall by increasing taxes on the people of the county.
The specialty hospital fight continues to heat up. The moratorium will expire shortly and will not be renewed. CMS will not pay any new hospitals until they figure out the appropriate amounts. They feel this will take six months. In the meantime, if hospitals want to take the chance regarding reimbursement, they may start building again.
Some hospitals have gotten the picture and are building specialty hospitals partnering with physicians. The latest is Baylor putting up a heart hospital in cooperation with 86 physicians. This is alot smarter than the Dakota Hospital, Community Hospital and the Ohio hospital situations. Those hospitals lost the physician community as their advocates. Top
The physicians working for the HMOs in Massachusetts are still questioning their bonuses for performance. The employers all love the bonuses since they get to use the money for their projects. The physicians want the HMOs to stop using billing data to base their payment and to use real patient data instead. The problem is the HMOs do not really know what they are getting for their money.
A Texas based consulting company has put out a survey that showed an 11% decrease in payments to FP and OB/GYNs in the past year. The highest increases in starting salary were in general surgery, emergency med and hospitalist with the range from 20%-14% respectively. The slots in practice that were the hardest to fill were cardiology, hospitalist, medicine, neurology and orthopedics.
What a surprise. Less Michigan physicians are now treating Medicaid patients. This thunderbolt was just announced by the Michigan Medical Society. Of course to counteract this trend, Michigan cut payments to physicians by another 4%. Now Michigan wants to be able to increase the money paid to the physicians by charging a tax on the gross receipts of the physicians. This is unfair to the physicians who have expensive equipment that they are paying off.
In another surprise the AMA, the bastion of impotence, has announced they lost an additional 2500 members last year. This is the fourth straight year the AMA has lost members and revenue.
The physicians of Missouri have notified United that they may be in breach of their contract by steering members to select providers. The contract states that United is prohibited from discriminating among providers when referring enrollees. It should be interesting if United gets sued for their indisgressions.
Is a physician worth $2 million a year? They can't even dunk. Covenant Medical Center in Waterloo, Iowa is paying two physicians $2 million salaries. One is a gastroenterologist and the other an orthopod. The hospital is a non-profit that provided under $2 million in charitable care. There is no such thing as a nonprofit. They will be investigated by the Feds for this. Top
Ever since the IOM put out its flawed study regarding the amount of deaths caused by medical errors, the bandwagon has been for information technology and electronic medical records with electronic ordering of meds. In the recent Achieves of Internal Medicine a study was published that showed electronic ordering did not reduce adverse events including death. What is needed sayth the article is even more money for more sophisticated computer systems. At the same time as the article Dr. Leavitt gave a talk at Stanford on the wonders of CPOE. Who's right? Where are the numbers and statistics to prove or disprove the money spent on ordering systems? Top
In a trial lawyer paid for study, Public Citizen, the physician bashers of the country, state that in DC the payments to patients have diminished and there is no need to curb non economic damages. The study showed a drop of about 1/2 between 2001 and 2004. The problem is where the data comes from. The data is from a federal database NPDB, that does not collect full data. DC has the highest med mal premiums in the country and the highest jury awards. DC has no restrictions on damages. Public Citizen is also using skewed data from 1991 and comparing it to 2004.
The Maryland physicians will get their full credit for med mal premiums as passed by the legislature. Instead of a 28% boost in premiums, they will pay only 5% more. Top
DISCLAIMER: Although this article is updated periodically, it reflects the author's point of view at the time of publication. Nothing in this article constitutes legal advice. Readers should consult with their own legal counsel before acting on any of the information presented.