As more states expand the scope of practice for nurse practitioners (NPs) in an effort to combat the growing physician shortage, news website Remapping Debate explores the differences in training between the providers and whether those differences impact patient care.
Credentialing Resource Center Digest - Volume 15, Issue 16
The latest issue of Medical Staff Briefing is here, and if there’s a common theme throughout, it’s information sharing—what to share, how to share it, and when. The lead-off Q&A with Karen Beem of the Healthcare Facilities Accreditation Program (HFAP) sheds light on HFAP’s new...
Credentialing Resource Center Digest - Volume 15, Issue 16
The looming physician shortage has prompted many medical educators to champion a new way of teaching called competency-based medical education (CBME). Instead of a set four-year medical school curriculum based on lectures and written exams, CBME focuses on small-group experiences. In this system...
Credentialing Resource Center Digest - Volume 15, Issue 16
The American College of Physicians (ACP) last week debuted a High Value Care Coordination Toolkit designed to enable more effective and patient-centered communication among primary care physicians (PCPs) and subspecialists. The toolkit includes five components.
An orthopedic surgeon accused of slapping anesthetized patients on the buttocks and making crude comments about them faces possible criminal charges, and the Syracuse, N.Y. hospital that reportedly ignored staff complaints about his behavior may be sanctioned, according to Syracuse.com. The...
Primary care physicians (PCP) are in a difficult spot these days. Paid less than specialists, many jam their schedules with 15-minute appointments to bring in cash. Hospitals are buying up clinics, and some independent physicians are eager to join and leave the business-side headaches to someone...
Maintenance of certification (MOC) exam scores are falling: First-time pass rates for those who re-certified in internal medicine have declined from 90% in 2009 to 78% in 2013, Kevin Pho, MD, wrote on the KevinMD blog earlier this week. Pho cited two possible reasons for this drop. The first...
Physician payment transparency was a hot topic this week, with the release of a year’s worth of Medicare payment data. With that in mind, I ran some more early numbers from the MSP Salary Survey. This survey is still open, so these results may shift somewhat, but a clearer picture is...
Community factors explain a substantial amount of variation in hospital readmission rates, according to a study reported in Health Services Research earlier this week. The study assessed the effect of county demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, access to care, and nursing home...
Credentialing Resource Center Digest - Volume 15, Issue 15
Long shifts and lack of sleep among medical residents led the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) to restrict work hours in 2003 and again in 2011. However, restrictions on work hours for surgeons-in-training may have backfired, according to a new review that found...
