Glazed Donut Sandwich with Bacon and a Fried Egg
If you’ve been reading my blog over time, you’ll notice that aside from plastic surgery, I touch on topics related to health care in general and the economics of health care. Specifically, I’m interested in how to reduce the costs of medicine through free market forces to drive down costs, i.e., competition and price transparency. […]
Doctors Taking ER Call: A Dying Breed
In the future, if you go to an emergency room and you have a problem that requires a specialist – like a brain surgeon, orthopedic surgeon or plastic surgeon – you may have difficulty finding a specialist to see you during your ER visit, even if you have insurance. According to the Medical Group Management […]
Why do patients continue to go to the ER for their primary care?
Just recently, Earl K. Long Hospital in Baton Rouge, LA, the “charity hospital” of Baton Rouge for the under and uninsured, closed. In a very coordinated and labor intensive transition orchestrated by Our Lady of the Lake Hospital, the patients have been given more treatment options. The transition was supposed to occur in October but […]
What Hospital’s Charge vs What They Get Paid: A Health Care Blame Game
A recent article by the Washington Post found here, discusses a new era in price transparency at first glance. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Federal agency that pays hospitals and doctors for services rendered to patients, released the prices that hospitals charge for the 100 most common inpatient procedures. The idea is to […]
The Housekeepers are the Sign of a Good Hospital!
So I’m moving to San Francisco. I’ve been an employed plastic surgeon of Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge for the last 6 years. And as I start cleaning out my office, I think it’s only natural that I start to reminisce. In a good way. Because it’s not always […]
The Health Care World According to the CEO of Cleveland Clinic
Dr. Delos “Toby” Cosgrove, a retired cardiothoracic surgeon, and current CEO of Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, was recently interviewed on Bloomberg News. The interview and subsequent story was entitled, “Health Care Must Be More Efficient, Cosgrove Says”. Before I comment on his interview, I first want to say that the title doesn’t adequately describe […]
Price Transparency in Healthcare – The Latest Buzzword!
Unless you’re totally oblivious to all forms of media from TV, print, or internet, you’ve probably heard about the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or ObamaCare. One of the main goals of the legislation is to bring down healthcare costs by several means (cutting reimbursements, decreasing the amount insurance companies spend on salaries, etc) but one […]
Find A Happy Surgeon!
A recent collaborative article between Kaiser Health News and The Washington Post discusses doctors losing their temper, repeatedly, and eventually being sent to anger management classes. If you’ve ever worked in a hospital or visited the Emergency Department for a problem that wasn’t really an emergency, you may have met that angry doctor! Where are […]
Electronic Medical Records – end all, be all?
Safety, cost, efficiency….all stated reasons why we’re switching to electronic medical records (EMR) in healthcare. Are these benefits being realized? Safety and medical errors, always a concern of hospitals and physicians, has come front and center since 1999 when the Institute of Medicine released statistics that 98,000 deaths were due to preventable medical […]