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When President Obama unveiled the Affordable Care Act, he said, "You won't lose your doctor." However, thousands in our area say they are because their doctors are changing their practice. The doctors are switching to a concierge or boutique medical practice. --snip-- Dr. Lazowick says he wanted to get back to the reasons he became a doctor, which was difficult with the way healthcare is going. He says, "I was on this conveyor belt where I was treating a problem moving to the next." Dr. Lazowick is not alone. Many primary care doctors are taking this route. And the pace...

Last weekend, after I gave a speech at a public forum about healthcare, a woman came up to the podium and privately asked me a question. "My daughter was just accepted to medical school. Do you think she should be a doctor?" This should have been the easiest question ever, but it was the opposite. I come from a family of physicians going back more than three generations. It is what we did, what we were. At a family gathering several years ago, I counted 14 men or women who were practicing physicians. Three of the fourteen doctors had married...

6 arrested in alleged kickback scheme at Sacred Heart Hospital April 16, 2013|By Jason Meisner | Tribune reporter An elderly man was admitted to Sacred Heart Hospital on Chicago's West Side in late February, intubated and sedated for more than a week and scheduled for an emergency tracheotomy even though it was medically unnecessary, federal prosecutors allege. After a hospital administrator raised questions, the surgery was postponed. Later that day, the administrator asked the longtime owner of the hospital, Edward Novak, if he was upset about the cancellation. "Tell me about it! Tell me about it!" Novak allegedly replied. What...

Per rules, AP stories cannot be posted. Rundown is that the lack of payments from insurers and Medicare is causing doctors to leave the island and leaving residents in a serious situation where there are not enough doctors to provide services.

Doctors are the only people who can drive the change in healthcare delivery that's needed to save the country from a financial crisis, a health policy expert said here. Emanuel highlighted six elements that must underline payment and delivery reform efforts: -- Focus on cost value -- Focus on the patient -- Standardize processes .... "We need a big infrastructure to be able to deliver high-quality care going forward," Emanuel said.

I just talked to someone familiar with the Toomey-Manchin proposal who raises a serious concern based on his understanding of the legislation. Everyone on all sides agrees that we need better help for those with mental health problems who need treatment. Unfortunately, the person I talked with is concerned that the Toomey-Manchin proposal could discourage people from getting help. The proposal will allow a doctor to add a patient to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) without ever telling the patient he or she has been added. There would be no due process requirement. Not all doctors will...

I’m going public today with a secret I’ve kept for a year—my husband and I are homeschooling our children. I never dreamed we would become homeschoolers. I wanted my kids integrated and socialized. I wanted their eyes opened to the realities of the world. I wanted the values we taught at home put to the test in the real world. But necessity drove me to consider homeschooling for my 2nd and 4th graders, and so I timidly attended a home school parent meeting last spring. Surprisingly it was full of doctors, lawyers, former public school teachers, and other professionals. These...

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - Upstate Rep. Joshua Putnam says the doctor's office is no place to be asked about your guns. But at Palmetto Pediatric, Dr. Deborah Greenhouse says it can be an invaluable part of routine checkups. She's seen what happens when kids don't get the message. "Three-year old, 5-year old sibling," explained Greenhouse. "A gun was laying around. One picked it up, shot and killed the other." "Just like I would talk to a family where maybe the parent is a smoker and would be exposing the child to secondhand smoke, it's the same thing here," she said....

A majority of physicians see a somewhat bleak future for medicine, pointing to eroding independence and shrinking income, reports everydayhealth.com. According to a survey from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions of more than 600 doctors, six in 10 physicians said they expect many of their colleagues to retire earlier than planned in the next 1 to 3 years. That perception cuts across age, gender and specialty. Another 55 percent of doctors surveyed believe many of their colleagues will cut back on their hours because of the way medicine is changing, although the survey didn't delineate on how it was...

Three years ago, Dr. Keith Smith, co-founder and managing partner of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, took

ObamaCare is pushing physicians into becoming hospital employees. The results aren't encouraging. The irony is that in the name of lowering costs, ObamaCare will almost certainly make the practice of medicine more expensive. It turns out that when doctors become salaried hospital employees, their overall productivity falls. The result? It is estimated that by next year, about 50% of U.S. doctors will be working for a hospital or hospital-owned health system. Once they work for hospitals, physicians change their behavior in two principal ways. Often they see fewer patients and perform fewer timely procedures.

“If you have to believe in something,” said a wise old uncle, “believe in science. But only if you have to believe.” Science isn’t all it is cracked up to be since many shady shamans pose as scientists in order to pluck money from someone’s pocket (typically taxpayer purses). Their magic trick is trade upon scientism, one definition of which is “the uncritical belief that scientific or quasi-scientific methods expose indisputable facts.” Political pitchpeople peddle such prattle knowing that the majority of non-scientific neighbors will accept as gospel conclusions published by seemingly sane institutions. Yet much of it is buncombe....

Effective July 1, 2012, the Medical Board of California is required to deny an application for licensure and to suspend the license/certificate/registration of any applicant or licensee who has outstanding tax obligations due to the Franchise Tax Board (FTB) or the State Board of Equalization (BOE) and appears on either the FTB or BOE's certified lists of top 500 tax delinquencies over $100,000. (AB 1424, Perea, Chapter 455, Statutes of 2011) Once it has been determined that an applicant or a licensee is on a certified list, the applicant or licensee has 90 days from the issuance of a preliminary...

More gun laws = fewer deaths, 50-state study says By By LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer – 14 hours ago CHICAGO (AP) — States with the most gun control laws have the fewest gun-related deaths, according to a study that suggests sheer quantity of measures might make a difference. But the research leaves many questions unanswered and won't settle the debate over how policymakers should respond to recent high-profile acts of gun violence. In the dozen or so states with the most gun control-related laws, far fewer people were shot to death or killed themselves with guns than in the...

Up to two-thirds of doctors and nurses at some hospitals would not recommend that their family and friends are treated where they work, internal NHS figures disclose on Friday. Staff at North Cumbria University Hospitals and United Lincolnshire Hospitals are the least likely to recommend treatment, according to figures that are being scrutinised closely by ministers. Less than 40 per cent of those employed at the trusts, both of which have relatively high death rates, would recommend the treatment available, compared with more than 90 per cent of staff at the top-rated hospitals. Nationally, almost 40 per cent of NHS...

Do you have a gun in your home? For some, that's a loaded question - particularly when asked by a doctor. A debate is simmering over when and whether physicians should be allowed to talk to their patients about firearms. Doctor groups say physicians are obligated to warn their patients about guns along with other health risks, such as riding in a car without wearing a seat belt. However, gun rights advocates balk at what they see as a needless invasion of privacy and blatant attempt at gun control advocacy. State and federal lawmakers are weighing in. President Barack Obama's...

GPs are to be forced to hand over confidential records on all their patients’ drinking habits, waist sizes and illnesses. The files will be stored in a giant information bank that privacy campaigners say represents the ‘biggest data grab in NHS history’. They warned the move would end patient confidentiality and hand personal information to third parties.

Lawmaker: Doctors shouldn't be asking patients about guns By Pete Kasperowicz - 01/16/13 03:33 PM ET Rep. John Fleming (R-La.), who was a family physician before coming to Congress in 2009, argued on Wednesday that doctors have no right to ask patients about their status as gun owners, as an executive order from President Obama would encourage them to do. "I came to Congress as a family physician with great concerns about the federal government intruding on the doctor-patient relationship," Fleming said. "By his executive actions today, President Obama is pushing the government further into the exam room. "He's trying...

The Miami Herald is reporting Hugo Chávez early demise was recognized long before the rest of the world was privvy to the details of a late diagnosed and lethal cancer. With the help of Cuban brothers Fidel and Raúl, and Chávez' hand-picked successor Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan presidential election was moved from December 2012 to October 2012, two months that the report says were crucial. In October Chávez could still stand before his supporters to applaud his re-election, but there was no certainty that he could do so in December. He returned to Cuba for a fourth round of cancer treatments in early...

If it feels like you’re spending more time in the waiting room of your doctor’s office these days, it’s not your imagination. Family doctors are busier than ever. For many people, it is becoming difficult to even find a doctor, say experts who blame Obamacare for accelerating the nation’s doctor shortage. … What’s driving the trend, health experts say, is the nation’s growing population of older Americans using more healthcare resources. At the same time, as many as 1 in 3 practicing physicians are nearing retirement age. What’s more, the addition of some 30 million patients newly covered by insurance—as...