Here is another gem from the House of Representatives: a bipartisan bill to increase Medicare reimbursements to community oncology practices. While at first glance this seems like a reasonable idea, this detail is puzzling:The so-called "prompt pay" legislation excludes certain discounts extended to wholesalers when calculating Medicare reimbursements and is strongly supported by oncologists.Confused? Met too. Here is how I understand it. Many community...
Friday, 4 March 2011
Thursday, 3 March 2011
Why easy is not always good
My mother-in-law is a typesetter. She will not read a book unless it is not only appealing in its content, but also pleasing to the eye. When I was in medical school, she did quite a bit of work for medical textbook publishers. Comparing books typeset by her to what I was grinding through on a daily (and nightly basis) incensed her: unwieldy tables appearing three pages away from the corresponding text, small letters crammed to capacity onto oversized...
The value of a test
Reading this vintage paper on C diff from the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, I came upon this irresistible conclusion:Pricele...
Quality or value? A measure for the 21st century
Fascinating, how in the same week two giants of evidence-based medicine have given such divergent views on the future of quality improvement. Here (free subscription required), Donald Berwick, the CMS administrator and founder and former head of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, emphasizes the need for quality as the strategy for success in our healthcare system. But here, one of the fathers of EBM, Muir Gray, states that quality is...
