Guest Blog Post by David Mokotoff, MD The past decade has seen an enormous upheaval in the practice of medicine. The private independent medical practice is in danger of extinction. Management overhead and red tape has skyrocketed due to government regulations and private insurance and pharmaceutical benefit rules. Added to that are multiple electronic medical … Read more
Sometimes the little things matter just as much as the big ones. They can create downstream problems that were never anticipated. We recently heard from a surgeon in Ohio. He was performing an office-based procedure. An employee was looking for the doctor. She quickly opened the door to the room where the surgeon was working. … Read more
Medical practices often add new techniques and procedures to increase revenue. I’m not suggesting the only reason is revenue. Presumably it’s to serve the patient and make a living BY serving the patient. And, I’m not opposed to physicians expanding what they do from treating disease to promoting health. But, I must admit, I did … Read more
One Arizona doctor had a good ending to a horrible odyssey. The urologist, Dr. Trabucco, was sued by an attorney for medical malpractice. Actually, this attorney did not really argue run-of-the-mill professional negligence. He argued the doctor “committed willful and malicious actions upon [the Plaintiff], eventually resulting in the [Plaintiff’s] death.” Underlying the claim was … Read more
A recent article evaluated 112 recorded clinical encounters. The rationale was testing of “shared decision-making tools.” I was confused by the findings and conclusions. In 27 of the 40 (67%) encounters in which clinicians elicited patient concerns, the clinician interrupted the patient after a median of 11 seconds (interquartile range 7–22; range 3 to 234 s). Uninterrupted patients took a … Read more
Yes, I know. The sun rises in the east. Sets in the west. And 2+2=4. Most of the time, when an attorney requests a copy of medical records for something like a personal injury case, auto accident, worker’s comp, they are professional, courteous, and offer to pay you the reasonable cost of copying the record. … Read more
Patients may be unhappy with their doctor for a variety of reasons. Dialogue solves most of them. But, sometimes this angst escalates. It culminates in a threat. All threats are not equal in the eyes of the law. A common threat is “Give me my money back and I will not slam you online.” Or … Read more
A famous US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once opined on obscenity: “I know it when I see it.” The Maryland Board of Medicine weighed in on whether it was unprofessional to write a prescription for a patient at a restaurant / bar. Excerpts from the legal case tell the tale. On October 1, 2012, … Read more
First, let’s discuss the difference between a service animal and a therapy animal. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, “service animals are defined as dogs that are individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities. Examples of such work or tasks include guiding people who are blind, alerting people who are … Read more
Many years ago, the presence of family members during cardiopulmonary resuscitation was verboten. The reigning principles were two-fold. Family members would get in the way of allowing the team to save the loved one. And they would be emotionally scarred forever. The medical literature has dispelled the myth that the family can’t handle the visual … Read more
