Becoming a physician requires passing many tests, beginning with premed studies, all the way through residency and, ultimately, board certification. You spend countless hours focused on passing examinations or rotations and learning to avoid pitfalls. As a residency program director, I and my colleagues invested considerable effort to determine which residents were struggling and to […]
Primary Care Physicians’ Ethical Dilemma: Meet Goals for Patients or Practice Owners?
Primary care physicians are on a collision course with health care consumers—their patients. While trying to deliver best clinical care, they must navigate a competitive business environment that encourages higher spending. The business of health care has undergone rapid consolidation in physician practice ownership. Spurred by the need to compete for patients, use EMR technology […]
Academic Medical Centers at Risk: How to Survive Medicare and Medicaid Value-Based Health Care
Academic Medical Centers (AMCs) provide care to the most complicated patients and have surmounted some of the worst clinical challenges of all time. Yet the biggest issue to threaten survival of AMCs might well be Medicare and Medicaid Value-Based Purchasing. While AMCs incorporate the training of new physicians in both community and highly specialized care, […]
The Missing Dimension of Residencies That Will Affect Your Program’s Future
Residency programs need to change. I write this as a former family medicine residency program director who spent much of my professional life teaching residents and medical students. Specifically, residency programs need to get on track in the value-based health care world. To fail to do so is to become obsolete. Here‘s the problem: Like […]
Asset or Liability? How Your Residency Programs May Affect Your Competitive Standing
At its core, value-based medicine is all about aligning physician and hospital costs with the quality and effectiveness of care. But all too often, providers ignore the impact of one of their greatest workforce resources: residency programs. In many environments, residents deliver much of the front-line care in hospitals, emergency rooms and in employed primary […]