John Nelson writes…

It is easy for a hospitalist group leader to focus principally on creating and fine tuning the work schedule, refereeing discussions and disputes with other specialties, and sitting in on many hospital committees.  Yet is important to recognize that these activities aren’t enough to ensure the practice will continue to thrive.  They are important activities to maintain the practice and prevent problems, but they don’t do much to prepare the practice for future challenges.  (I’ve discussed elsewhere that I think it is strange that making and managing the schedule is seen by many hospitalist group leaders as their most important job. While they are responsible for ensuring the group has an appropriate schedule, in many practices I think they should hand off the leg work of creating the schedule to others.) (more…)

John Nelson writes…

I want to highlight an issue addressed in SHM’s July “Washington Update.” (Scroll down to the section titled “CMS releases proposed payment rule for FY10.”)  What follows is a portion of what is in the update. (more…)

Robert Chang writes…

As a continuation from my previous post, readmissions has caused continued chatter on health-care blogs and the downstream discussion on health care reform.  Some comments from blogs are supportive like The Commonwealth Fund, whereas others are not.  The comments section on the latter blog is both inflammatory and informative, with the comment from John Fembup summing up one of the key issues at hand (you can just read his comment in a shared Google document here) – where is physician leadership on this issue?

If you think the issue is irrelevant, the Hospital Compare website may change your mind, with support from many national physician organizations.  Hmm. (more…)