Bad news for primary care advocates and the future of the proposed patient centered medical home.

Showing how difficult it is to coordinate care and focus on prevention, MedPage Today reports on a recent article from JAMA showing that, of the 15 Medicare pilot projects that used nurses to promote medication adherence and facilitate communication with doctors, only one reduced hospitalizations and none cut costs.

That’s a piss-poor (more…)

No, they don’t.

In many cases, drug companies like to leave sample medications for doctors to dispense. In most cases, they are for heavily publicized medications, and are often expensive or on a high co-pay tier. So although these medications may initially be “free,” when patients ask for a refill, they will eventually pay more for their treatment course.

Matthew Mintz, in his piece where he gives tips for patients on saving (more…)

Given the financial trouble many ERs and hospitals are facing, concierge emergency care may be on the horizon.

Richard Winters (via GruntDoc) imagines such as scenario, which for a fee, patients receive private rooms, couches and chairs for family, private telephones and internet service, flat-screen television, and events to meet the hospital administration and physicians.

As long as every cent continues to be squeezed out of (more…)

Politicians are wisely acknowledging that primary care doctors need to be paid more.

But will that be enough? DrRich, who’s practiced on both sides of the specialist and generalist fence, notes that the “litany of professional travesties has been visited upon the primary care doctors far more than upon the specialists,” and that “merely increasing the pay of PCPs would override all these other considerations” is absurd.

He points (more…)