Year: 2018
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A Promise to Help with Sandra Mathews Ford, M.D.
BIRMINGHAM – When Sandra Ford was just 8 years old, her father took her to the doctor. Back then, Alabama was under segregationist laws, so it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for young Sandra and her father to wait on one side of the doctor’s office from the time they walked in around 4…
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Medical Association, AMA, Others Take a Stand on New CMS Rule
The Medical Association joined with the American Medical Association and more than 170 other organizations to support some components of CMS’ “Patients Over Paperwork” initiative, and say three of its components need to be enacted immediately to reduce “note bloat” redundancy, yet also to oppose a proposal to collapse payment rates for physician office visit services…
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Big Changes Proposed for Evaluation and Management Services
It’s been more than 20 years since the 1997 revisions to Evaluation and Management guidelines, which focus mainly on physical examination. The 2019 proposed changes provide practitioners a choice in the basis of documenting E/M visits; alleviating the burdens and focusing attention on alternatives that better reflect the current practice of medicine. The implementation of…
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HHS Seeks Comments on Easing Stark Law Burdens
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has requested public input on how the physician self-referral law, or Stark Law, may be interfering with care coordination. To help accelerate the transformation to a value-based system that includes care coordination, HHS has launched a Regulatory Sprint to Coordinated Care. The Regulatory Sprint is focused on identifying…
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ProAssurance and Sure Med Compliance Join to Fight Opioid Crisis
BIRMINGHAM ─ ProAssurance Corporation has announced an exclusive affiliation with Sure Med Compliance® (SMC) to promote the use of SMC’s Care Continuity Program® (CCP) in an effort to help combat the opioid epidemic in the United States. ProAssurance-insured physicians will be eligible for discounted access to Sure Med’s Care Continuity Program The CCP helps physicians…
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CDC STUDY: Steep and Sustained Increases in STDs in Recent Years
Nearly 2.3 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis were diagnosed in the United States in 2017, according to preliminary data released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the National STD Prevention Conference in Washington, D.C. This surpassed the previous record set in 2016 by more than 200,000 cases and marked…
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Enterprise Physician Receives Martha Myers Role Model Award
Raised in the rural south Alabama community of Jack, Beverly Flowers Jordan, M.D., FAAFP, is a first-generation college student. Her parents stressed the importance of serving others and worked hard to ensure that their children were able to attend college. Dr. Jordan first expressed her desire to become a physician at the age of 5…
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Paying More Money Is Not the Best Way to Retain Great Staff
Medical practices are painfully in need of keeping their top employees. The time, costs and dangers of recruiting replacement personnel are just part of the issue. Loss of key team members negatively impacts patient care, practice profitability, and staff morale. All administrators agree the retention of a trained, well-performing and mutually cooperative staff is a…
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Do You Record Patient Phone Calls? Here’s What You Need to Know.
A physician practice recently inquired about implementing a policy pursuant to which the practice would begin recording phone calls to and from patients and referring providers. The practice of recording phone calls is not uncommon. For example, every time you call a customer service number you are informed that the call “may be recorded for…
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Don’t Get Caught in a Copay Conundrum
In the current environment of increasing patient deductibles and copays, the billing and collection of the patient portion of the services you provide is top of mind. In the Department of Health and Human Service’s report dated May 23, 2017, Alabama’s average monthly health insurance premium amounts increased 223 percent from 2013 to 2017, versus…