The Journal of medical practice management : MPM
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The Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) uses a combination of payment incentives and adjustments to promote reporting of quality information by eligible professionals who satisfactorily report data on quality measures for covered Physician Fee Schedule services furnished to Medicare Part B Fee-for-Service beneficiaries. Physicians should become familiar with the PQRS core measures to maintain compliance with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Adherence to these basic guidelines will allow physicians to not only maximize their income, but also increase quality of care, decrease complications, and decrease healthcare expenditures.
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Long respected as centers of research and educational excellence, many traditional academic medical centers (AMCs) realize that their research and educational missions will be difficult if not impossible to sustain, if all the federal funding cuts discussed in anticipation of the "fiscal cliff" occur. To set the context for this perfect storm, we will review the many issues that will affect all hospitals and then focus on the three that will disproportionally affect academic medical centers ... and keep "CEOs up at night." Aside from a case of CEO chronic insomnia, how do we expect AMCs to weather this perfect storm? Whereas the fundamental emphasis remains on highly specialized and complex care, AMCs are increasingly developing innovative approaches for managing patients across the continuum of care and strengthening their ability to manage patients with high-cost, chronic conditions.
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It's a given that collaboration is an important aspect of medical practice management. But achieving genuine collaboration among the members of your medical practice team may not be as simple as it seems. This article suggests 25 practical strategies for medical practice employees and their managers to help them create and foster collaboration in their medical practices. ⋯ In addition, this article offers a four-step strategy for dealing with a domineering collaborator and a five-step strategy for dealing with a collaboration slacker. This article also includes a 20-question self-quiz to help you and your employees evaluate your collaborative work style. Finally, this article describes 10 common collaboration pitfalls and the strategies you and your staff can use to avoid falling victim to them.
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As discussed in Part I of this article, hospital executives in Canada, Germany, and the United States manage their facilities' resources to maximize the incentives inherent in their respective reimbursement system and thereby increase their bottom line. It was also discussed that an additional supply of available hospitals, physicians, and other services will generate increased utilization. Part II discusses how the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 will eventually fail since it neither controls prices nor utilization (e.g., imaging, procedures, ambulatory surgery, discretionary spending). ⋯ S. healthcare in the future. Although the German healthcare system has a number of shortfalls, its paradigm could offer the most appropriate compromise when selecting the economic incentives to reduce the percentage of the U. S. gross domestic product expenditure for healthcare from 17.4% to roughly 12.0%.