The HCPLive conference coverage page features articles, videos, and expert-led live coverage from major medical meetings throughout the year.
What's the Best Way to Treat Fibromyalgia? A Holistic Approach
Fibromyalgia is a complex illness, especially when there are some healthcare professionals who do not consider it to be an illness. However, there is a high prevalence of fibromyalgia (3-4.7% of the general population) and patients who have it experience poor quality of life and place a high economic burden on themselves, their families, and society.
People with RA Not at Increased Risk of Serious Infection with Biologic Therapy
October 18th 2009The most important risk factors for serious infections were not biologic medications, as some might have expected, but instead were age, medical conditions such as emphysema, and RA-specific factors like disease duration.
How Can I Help?: Streamlining Call Management
The impetus for Alfred I. DuPont Hospital for Children’s switch to a centralized system came about because the hospital administrators wanted patients communicating with live people. An admirable goal for sure, but with only two live people available to take calls at anyone time, patients often ended up spending 15 minutes on hold waiting for a human voice, becoming frustrated and hanging up.
Glucosamine May Not Aid Osteoarthritic Knees
October 17th 2009Prior studies of glucosamine and its role in the prevention of joint damage in knee OA have produced conflicting results, but a recent study found that the odds of worsening cartilage damage in a glucosamine group were the same as for patients given a placebo.
Anti-TNF Therapy for Rheumatoid Arthritis May Increase Risk of Joint Infections
October 17th 2009Anti tumor necrosis factor therapy for rheumatoid arthritis appears to increase a patient's risk of developing septic arthritis, which is the infection of a joint, according to research presented this week at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Scientific Meeting in Philadelphia, PA.
Adverse Reactions to Infusion Therapy
In a session that focused on potential adverse reactions to rheumatologic infusion therapies, Jacqueline M. Fritz, RN, MSN, CNS, Arthritis and Osteoporosis, La Palma, California, explained that infusion therapies take time to administer.
MGMA Saves the Best for Last: A Panel Discussion with Three Wise Men
Today's panel discussion on improving the quality of care through quality, innovation, and service included some all star presenters. If this team were a baseball team they'd be the Yankees; we're talking about some big names. We have Dr. Delos M. Cosgrove, president and chief executive officer of Cleveland Clinic; Dr. William Wright, Executive Medical Director Colorado Permanente Medical Group; and Dr. Gary S. Kaplan, Chairman and CEO of the Virginia Mason Health System.
Managed Care De-selection and Further Implications of Financial and Quality Report Cards
Dahl and Rahman sought to help attendees analyze performance systems management and apply applications to their practice, establish core measurements and define collection processes, and compare improvement tools, such as root-cause analysis and “what-if” analyses.
EMR with Clinical Risk Management = Patient Safety: A Model for Success
Anne Huben-Kearney, vice president, risk management, ProMutual Group, Boston, MA, today presented “EMR with Clinical Risk Management = Patient Safety: A Model for Success.” We spoke with her to learn about her experiences working with a health information exchange and professional liability carrier and how and why risk management components can and should be implemented into an EMR.
Group Therapy: Discussing EHR Interoperability
Electronic Health Records – the three words that you’ve probably heard a billion times. They are the words that lead to other words that you hear over and over again: incentives, penalties, integration, etc. Many physicians admittedly hesitate to implement an EHR in their practice for numerous reasons. But aside from the big ones, such as cost, security, and the time it takes, there’s one major barrier – interoperability.
ICD-10 and the New HIPAA Transaction Standards Are Here!
This session focuses on the recently released ICD-10 regulation and its impact on your practice. This session addresses critical issues such as practice compliance dates; the intersection of ICD-10 and the latest version of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) electronic transactions standards; how physician practices can address the many challenges ICD-10 will bring in the areas of payer contracting, encounter documentation, staff training, research and benchmarking data, and software modifications; and how to work with vendors and payers to comply with this mandate.
EHR Incentive Payments and Practical Implementation Issues
Today’s discussion on EHR incentive payments and implementation included a lot of issues that regular MDNG readers are familiar with: HITECH, “meaningful use,” and annual incentives. Although it may seem like the same old song and dance, the reality is that all those dates you’ve been hearing about are fast approaching.
Come On, Make a Decision: Practical Tools to Move Beyond an Impasse
Decision-making in medical practices is often stalled by competing interests, conflicting goals and misunderstandings. In this session, you will learn from real-life examples why impasses occur and the problems they create for physicians, staff and patients. You will discover how to gain agreement through using a voting matrix and how to test alternatives and devise voting options. In addition, you will learn the role of confidentiality in protecting future working relationships in the medical practice.