The Journal of medical practice management : MPM
-
The majority of medical practices have children visit them at least some of the time. The medical practice staff must be ready to work with the children who have appointments or who accompany adult patients. ⋯ It suggests specific ways the medical practice staff can coach parents and caregivers about a child's upcoming appointment. This article also offers 25 practical strategies the staff can use when working with the children who visit the practice, a checklist of items to discuss with children about an upcoming checkup, and 30 alternative ways to say "good job" to a child who visits the medical practice.
-
It's first thing in the morning, the day's appointment schedule is jam-packed, and you just found out that you're going to be short-staffed. After the initial panic wears off what are you and your co-workers going to do? How will you manage to work through your day with fewer people on hand? This article suggests a three-pronged approach to the challenge of medical practice short-staffing. ⋯ Finally, this article provides 10 practical tips for coping with the short-staffed day. It offers helpful advice to any medical practice employee who finds himself or herself feeling overwhelmed by a short-staffed day.
-
Medical school debt load of graduate anesthesiologists at a single medical school campus, 1982-2007.
Medical school debt continues to grow at an ever increasing rate. We questioned whether the debt incurred by the residents finishing their training at the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita (UKSM-W) was overly burdensome. We surveyed all graduate anesthesiologists from UKSM-W. ⋯ The percentage of gross income required to repay the debt was the same for both cohorts. Both cohorts reported under-funding retirement plans and children's education to service debt. Few of either cohort chose practice location because of debt load.
-
Ethics is a critical part of medical employee education and is a subject that requires frequent and regular consideration and attention. This article defines ethics particularly as it applies to an individual who works in a medical practice and explores five core ethical values for all medical practice personnel. ⋯ This article also offers ethical guidelines specifically for medical practice employees regarding the use of their time at work and their workplace communications. Finally, this article offers a set of questions a medical practice employee can use when working through an ethical dilemma and dispels six common myths about medical practice ethics.
-
A recent publication suggested that only 24% of U. S. doctors use electronic medical records (EMRs), and that physicians in group practices, urban settings, and multispecialty groups are more likely than others to use EMRs. If the widespread adoption of EMRs is to be accomplished in keeping with the President's Health IT goal of universal use by 2014, the reasons for EMR under-utilization must be ascertained and addressed. ⋯ First, EMR adoption (not just electronic billing or prescribing) may actually be higher (67%) than previous reports. Second, the most important barriers to EMR use were high cost, loss of autonomy, and workflow disruption (from both installation and ongoing use). These responses are discussed in the context of recent proposals by both private and public entities that EMR systems be given away for free to any physician who will use them, as well as the potential for patients' online personal health records to permit integration of data across multiple EMR systems.