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Tag: primary care

Death of an Evangelist

It feels like part of me is dying. I am losing something that has been a part of me for nearly 20 years.

I bought in to the idea of electronic records in the early 90′s and was enthusiastic enough to implement in my practice in 1996. My initial motivation was selfish: I am not an organized person by nature (distractible, in case you forgot), and computers do much of the heavy lifting in organization. I saw electronics as an excellent organization system for documents. Templates could make documentation quicker and I could keep better track of labs and x-rays. I could give better care, and that was a good enough reason to use it.

But the EMR product we bought, as it came out of the box, was sorely lacking. Instead of making it easier to document I had to use templates generated by someone else – someone who obviously was not a physician (engineers, I later discovered). So we made a compromise: since it was easier to format printed data, we took that data and made a printed template.
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Progress Note: So, It Turns Out Starting a Business Is Really, Really Hard…

I am not sure if my lack of blogging is a good sign or a bad one. It’s been a week and a half since I started my new practice and I finally am getting this chance to come up for air. It’s been an über hectic and very draining time, but I am happy to report that the end of the week was significantly better than the beginning.

Here are some things I am learning.

1. Starting a business is really, really hard

I did my best to make my business as simple as possible, mainly because I understand my own deficiencies when it comes to business-related activities. Of course, being in a leadership role of a practice for the past 16 years helps me understand incredibly confusing concepts like accounts receivable, budgets, paying bills, and avoiding going to jail for spending all the collections on lottery tickets and reporting it as “research.” I purposefully designed the business to require as little accounting as possible, and in general I think I accomplished that. People come in to see me, pay me by swiping their card on the nifty card-reader on my iPhone, and I email them the receipt. That’s not the hard part (aside from people touching the “skip signature” button with their hand while they are signing).

The hardest part of starting a business for me is knowing what overhead items are necessary and what are not. Building the office took a month longer than I expected and cost twice as much. Yet I signed “yes” to all of the things that added cost. Some of them were necessary, like doing the things needed to comply with ADA, compliance with electrical code, and having furniture. But where to draw the line? I want the office to send a message of “professional, yet welcoming,” which means it can’t look cheap but doesn’t look posh either. I want the office to be consistent with my logo, a door opening that says “come on in,” and “welcome.” But everything adds cost, and mounting cost is tough when delay in opening means I am earning nothing.

Everyone is willing to give advice, but most of the advice given has little foundation in my reality. People say “it will all work out,” or “you’ll do great,” reassuring me that I don’t have to fret about things. It’s as if I can sit back and relax while things “work out.” The reality is that the reason they will work out is that I will spend most of my waking hours (and some while I’m not awake) working, worrying, thinking about details, and trying to plan for a very uncertain future. Continue reading…

The RUC is a Symptom. RBRVS is the Disease

The RUC is an easy target. The RUC is flawed. But the RUC is not the problem. Several bloggers have written extensively about the RUC – How the RUC Escaped a Challenge to Our Deeply Flawed Reimbursement System and US Senate Subcommittee Asks What the RUC is About.

In no way can I defend the payment schedules that the RUC has proposed to Medicare. I can defend their recent changes. Radiology payments decreased last year; interventional cardiology payments decreased last year; and many other procedures have decreased dramatically. The relative payments are still wrong (in my opinion), but the RUC actually has been responsive to criticism. They have increased primary care payments (admittedly not enough).

But if one studies the problem carefully enough, one must decide that the idea of paying per episode almost must lead to gaming the system. Forget the RUC, the entire idea of time independent episode based payment must lead to worse medical care and higher costs. If physicians can make more money by doing more, then some will.

Practice administrators push primary care physicians to see more patients each day. If we can decrease the time spent per patient from 20 min to 15 min then we could see up to 8 more patients in an 8 hour day. Our overhead has not changed – hence the marginal financial benefits are huge.

But any honest physician will tell you that the result is rushed medical care. Do we want our surgeon trying to do 5 surgeries today rather than 4? Do you want to be the 5th patient? Continue reading…

Day One: Not So Grand Opening

I was furious. I went to the office on Sunday to see what work the electrician had done (and to discuss decor issues with my wife), and my office was deserted. The inspection was supposed to happen on Monday, allowing me to get furniture in the office and see patients on Tuesday.  A text message back from my contractor said that the electrician would be in on Monday and the inspection would happen on Tuesday.  Apparently he didn’t realize I was so ambitious (read: crazy) to see patients so soon after construction was completed.  Apparently my panic wasn’t obvious to him.

On Sunday I broke with my usually placid demeanor (read: codependent) and expressed my emotions on the issue quite clearly.  Many panicked calls from supervisors and electricians later (read: effusive apologies and promises to fix things), and the reality had not changed: inspectors would not be coming until Tuesday, and so my opening, already a month after I planned, would wait one more day.  What a terrible way to start my new practice: canceling appointments on my first day.

Then I realized something: I don’t need an office to do my job.  One of the things I am trying to overturn is the practice of requiring all care to be conducted in the exam room.  Why can’t people talk to their doctor on the phone?  Why can’t they email questions?  Why not videoconferencing for visits?  Why not texting me a picture of the rash (depending on the location, of course)?  Why hold my expertise hostage to the ransom of an office visit?  So then what’s the big deal of not having an office?

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How the RUC Escaped a Challenge to Our Deeply-Flawed Reimbursement System

On January 7, a federal appeals court rejected six Georgia primary care physicians’ (PCPs) challenge to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) 20-year, sole-source relationship with the secretive, specialist-dominated federal advisory committee that determines the relative value of medical services. The American Medical Association’s (AMA) Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC) is, in the court’s view, not subject to the public interest rules that govern other federal advisory groups. Like the district court ruling before it, the decision dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims out of hand and on procedural grounds, with almost no discussion of content or merit.

Thus ends the latest attempt to dislodge what is perhaps the most blatantly corrosive mechanism of US health care finance, a star-chamber of powerful interests that, complicit with federal regulators, spins Medicare reimbursement to the industry’s advantage and facilitates payment levels that are followed by much of health care’s commercial sector. Most important, this new legal opinion affirms that the health industry’s grip on US health care policy and practice is all but unshakable and unaccountable, and it appears to have co-opted the reach of law.

The RUC exerts its influence by rolling up the collective interests of the nation’s most powerful medical specialty societies and, indirectly, the drug and device firms that support and benefit from their activity. The RUC uses questionable “methodologies,” closed to public scrutiny, to value medical services. CMS has historically accepted nearly 90 percent of the RUC’s recommendations without further due diligence. In a damning October 2010 Wall Street Journal expose, former CMS Administrator Tom Scully described the RUC’s processes as “indefensible.”

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The Nine C’s of Successful Accountable Primary Care Delivery

The Accountable Primary Care Model: New Hope for Medicare and Primary Care

Primary care has long been something of an outcast in the medical profession — and despite convincing outcomes and a validated assessment tool, checkered reimbursement has brought the Institute of Medicine’s Primary Care Model to the brink of demise.

But the accountable care movement, and some Medicare Advantage plans in particular, have breathed new life into primary care and offered new hope for the struggling Medicare system. At St. Louis-based Essence Healthcare, a 4.5-star Medicare Advantage plan, network primary care physicians’ deep experience in providing accountable care has spawned innovations that advance primary care and make progress toward the “Triple Aim Plus One” (outlined in C9 below). Their success is the result of five years of active practice transformation and continuous improvement in a risk-bearing environment.

The best practice experience from these front-line physicians can be summarized in the Accountable Delivery System Institute’s Accountable Primary Care Model. This model embraces the four pillars outlined in the Institute of Medicine/Starfield model and expands them for Nine C’s of Accountable Primary Care Delivery. They are:

C1: First contact means that care is initially sought from the Primary Care Physician/Clinician (PCP) when new health or medical needs arise. In a nationally representative sample of more than 20,000 episodes of care, when these events began with PCP visits, as distinguished from some other source of care in the system, costs were 53% lower. This cost differential persisted after controlling for ER visits, health status, socio-demographics, and other relevant variables.

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Rob’s New Economics of Practice Management

It has always been my assumption that my new practice will be as “digital” as possible. No, I am not going into urology, I am talking about computers. [Waiting for the chuckles to subside]

For at least ten years, I’ve used a digital EKG and spirometer that integrated with our medical record system, taking the data and storing it as meaningful numbers, not just pictures of squiggly lines (which is how EKG’s and spirometry reports appear to most folks). Since this has been obvious from the early EMR days, the interfaces between medical devices and EMR systems has been a given. I never considered any other way of doing these studies, and never considered using them without a robust interface.

Imagine my surprise when I was informed that my EMR manufacturer would charge me $750 to allow it’s system to interface with a device from their list of “approved devices.” Now, they do “discount” the second interface to $500, and then take a measly $250 for each additional device I want to integrate, so I guess I shouldn’t complain. Yet I couldn’t walk away from this news without feeling like I had been gouged.

Gouging is the practice of charging extra for someone for something they have no choice but to get. I need a lab interface, and the EMR vendor (not just mine, all of the major EMR vendors do it) charges an interface fee to the lab company, despite the fact that the interface has been done thousands of times and undoubtedly has a very well-worn implementation path. This one doesn’t hurt me personally, as it is the lab company (that faceless corporate entity) that must dole out the cash to a third-party to do business with me.

Doing construction in my office, I constantly worry about being gouged. When the original estimate of the cost of construction is again superseded because of an unforeseen problem with the ductwork, I am at the mercy of the builder. Fortunately, I think I found a construction company with integrity. Perhaps I am too ignorant to know I am being overcharged, but I would rather assume better of my builders (who I’ve grown to like).

Yet thinking about gouging ultimately brings me back to the whole purpose of what I am doing with my new practice, and what drove me away from the health care system everyone is so fond of. If there is anywhere in life where people get gouged or are in constant fear of gouging, it is in health care. Continue reading…

Doctor Code: Learning EMR Language

OK, I’ll admit it: I had no idea.  I thought that the whining and griping by other doctors about EMR was just petulance by a group of people who like to be in charge and who resist change.  I thought that they were struggling because of their lack of insight into the real benefits of digital records, instead focusing on their insignificant immediate needs.  I thought they were a bunch of dopes.

Yep.  I am a jerk.

My transition to a new practice gave me the opportunity to dump my old EMR (with all the deficiencies I’ve come to hate) and get a new, more current system.*  I figured that someone like me would be able to learn and master a new EMR with ease.  After all, I do understand about data schema, structured and unstructured data, I know about MEDCIN, SNOMED, and HL-7 interfaces.  Gosh darn it, I am a card-carrying member of the EMR elite!  A new product should be a piece of cake!   I’ll put my credentials at the bottom of this post, in case you are interested.**

So, imagine my shock when I was confused and befuddled as I attempted to learn this new product.  How could someone who could claim a bunch of product enhancements as my personal suggestions have any problem with a different system?  The insight into the answer to this sheds light onto one of the basic problems with EMR systems.

Problem 1: Different Languages

As I struggled to figure out my new system, it occurred to me that I felt a lot like a person learning a new language.  Here I was: an expert in German linguistics and I was now having to learn Japanese.  Both are systems of written and spoken code that accomplish the same task: communication of data from one person to another.  Both do so using many of the same basic elements: subjects, objects, nouns, verbs.  Both are learned by children and spoken by millions of people.  But both are very, very different in many ways.

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Progress


Finally.

I can finally see progress in what I am doing.  Above is a photo of the front page of my new practice website (visit http://doctorlamberts.org).

There still is a little “Lorem ipsum” here and there – like having labels you missed on a shirt you are wearing – but I am very happy with the look.  The pictures of the sepia photos with the iPad making it color were the genius of my web developer (with some suggestions from me), giving a perfect image of the use of technology to accomplish “old-fashioned care made new.”

I’ve spent good portion of the past few days writing the content (replacing most of the “Lorem ipsum”).  Of what I’ve written, the strongest was in the section “Why It’s Different,” where I compare life in a traditional practice to what I intend to do.  Here are a few examples:

“I Need an Appointment”

Traditional Practice

· Call the office, hear a message about calling 911, get placed on hold or leave voice message (after navigating automated attendant).
· Get called back to find out the reason for your appointment.
· Appointment is made around what is open for the doctor.
· Take time away from your schedule to meet doctor’s schedule.

Our Practice:

· Log on to portal and directly make your own appointment to fit your schedule.
Or
· Call the office and tell a human being that you need an appointment.

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The Battle for the Souls of American Doctors

We physicians like to think that we are really different from other workers.

We physicians, perhaps thinking back to that medical school application essay we all wrote, really believe that we went into this career to simply help others.  We physicians truly believe that we always put our patients first.Because we sincerely believe all of the above, we are shocked when someone like Uwe Reinhardt points out that collectively we act just like any other worker in the economy.

The classic 1986 letters between the Princeton professor Reinhardt and former New England Journal of Medicine editor Arnold Relman highlight the tension between how we think of ourselves and how we act.

Relman thinks physicians are special and he asks Reinhardt the following question:

“Do you really see no difference between physicians and hospitals on the one hand, and ‘purveyors of other goods and services,’ on the other?”

Reinhardt is ready with a long answer that should be read in its entirety.  The short answer is that doctors act like any other human beings. A portion of his answer includes the following:

“Surely you will agree that it has been one of American medicine’s more hallowed tenets that piece-rate compensation is the sine qua non of high quality medical care.  Think about this tenet, We have here a profession that openly professes that its members are unlikely to do their best unless they are rewarded in cold cash for every little ministration rendered their patients.  If an economist made that assertion, one might write it off as one more of that profession’s kooky beliefs.  But physicians are saying it.”

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