| | Physician's Focus: End-of-life Care for Elderly—Comfort of Body and Mind Is Sought
| | Whether delivered at home, in a hospital, at a hospice, or a nursing facility, the objective of palliative care for terminally ill elderly patients is to intervene both in physical and psychosocial dimensions to improve as much as possible the overall quality of what's left of the patient's life. Equally as important as symptom management and having treatment options are patient dignity, the patient's family and interpersonal relationships, emotional support, addressing life's unfinished business, and spiritual issues. | |  |
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| Physician's Focus: Improved Coding: Increase Income Cost Effectively
| | | As a physician, what can you do to ensure the greatest revenue for the work you do? The answer among the experts is unanimous: The way to optimize your earnings is to optimize communication with your coding and billing staffs. Working together, physicians, coders, and billers can identify and solve coding challenges and develop workflows that will maximize revenue and compliance. |
| | Physician's Focus: EHR in Actual Practice
| | | "Meaningful use" may be spurring an increase in health IT spending, with 59% in a March 1 survey by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) saying they plan to make needed investments in order to quality for federal incentives for the meaningful use of electronic health records (EHR). Security remains a concern for those surveyed, with a third saying a top worry is an internal data breach and another third saying it's compliance with new HIPAA rules and security audits. |
| | Physician's Focus: H1N1 and Seasonal Flu, Too
| | | 2010 started off with the percent of doctors' visits caused by flu-like symptoms under the 3-year average national baseline. H1N1 flu activity had leveled off below expected numbers, but the CDC cautioned that the pandemic was not over and the virus continued to circulate, causing illness, hospitalizations, and deaths. Seasonal flu strains were not being seen in substantial numbers. |
| | Effective Health Care Program
| | | ModernMedicine has made available to you summaries of the Effective Health Care Program's most recent findings on different medical interventions and on strategies to help patients, policymakers, and healthcare providers make the most informed choices among treatment options. These findings are a result of comparative effectiveness reviews conducted as part of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. |
| | Physician's Focus: Bad News: How to Deliver It Well
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| | Give a patient bad news, and he or she won't remember much of what you say after that. Here's how to improve communication so a patient retains important information, such as on treatment and follow-up, which is delivered along with a discouraging diagnosis or test results. |
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Practice Tools
