Dear Education Colleagues, Are you familiar with all the ICD-10 changes coming your way? Are you certain exactly where to find morphology codes? What has the 8-week rule regarding initial and subsequent MIs changed to? How does laterality effect your coding? How will you correctly code for symptom treatment? What about the management of terminal … Read moreICD-10 Program Focusing on Hospice and Palliative Care
Drug shortages present more than a few challenges to the EOL community. Many constituencies, patients, clinicians, and the organizations that provide care, are affected. Challenges include consistent symptom management (very problematic when cascading supply shortages compel, what seems to be, continuous drug rotation), potential patient distress (you’re changing my pain medication AGAIN!), comfortable prescribing (what’s … Read moreDrug Shortages
To improve quality, whom we measure is as important as what. by Joe Rotella, MD, MBA, FAAHPM The growing awareness in America that our healthcare system is unaffordable and fails to deliver consistent quality has led us to healthcare reform, mandatory quality reporting, pay-for-performance, and Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). We need good measures of quality … Read moreThe Devil Is in the Denominator
Charles V. (Chuck) Wellman, MD FAAHPM, is Chief Medical Director of Hospice of the Western Reserve in Cleveland, OH, and chair of AAHPM’s Leadership and Workforce Strategic Coordinating Committee It is with great pleasure that we can finally announce the availability of the AAHPM Physician Compensation and Benefits Survey Report. Two years ago a poll … Read moreAAHPM Physician Compensation Survey Reveals Diversity in Pay, High Job Satisfaction
As hospices and palliative care services evolve into advanced palliative care organizations with greater scope and influence over late-life care within their communities, a “new” physician executive role is emerging along the career path for HPM physicians. This role is broader than the traditional senior medical director or chief medical officer positions, and is progressing toward what we refer to as the “chief community palliative care officer”.
…the “newer and friendlier” JC have some progressive, visionary work for the future of healthcare. It was two day conference and networking opportunity for seventy invited representatives from a diverse healthcare contingent representing a variety of organizations from the American Hospital Association, to the CDC to the Undersea & Hyperbaric Medical Society, Inc. All a friendly lot and it was very nice to see the AAHPM represented.
In April, the Palmetto GBA Medical Directors issued a memo to home health and hospice providers because of concern over a high error rate related to signature problems in the medical record, x-ray reports, and laboratory and radiology orders. They hope to make a significant improvement in the error rate over the next year through provider education.