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| Current Nashville Medical News |
Scope of Practice
APNs Tout Primary Care Capabilities
For advance practice nurses (APNs), it’s a matter of simple math … the fastest-growing population segment is over 65, more than 30 million Americans will be added to the insurance rolls through healthcare reform, and the number of primary care physicians is decreasing. To fill the looming gaps, APNs want to ensure they are allowed to practice to the fullest extent of their training.
CINDY SANDERS |
Healthcare Reform Boosts Primary Care
Reimbursement Incentives Offered to Ease the Strain
Well, it’s done, and depending on your perspective, the historic Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that sets about reforming America’s health system could be a boon or it could be a bust. For most stakeholders, reality is somewhere in the middle.
SHARON H. FITZGERALD |
Letter from the Editor
We are so excited about our plans for July. Our regularly formatted paper will be on hiatus for one month while we bring you InCharge Healthcare, a comprehensive contact list of key decision-makers covering the broad spectrum of Nashville’s healthcare industry.
Cindy Sanders |
NHCC Looks at Healthcare Investment Trends
Confidence and Strength Returning
Nashville’s historic floodwaters didn’t dampen the sunny forecasts from healthcare industry experts at the Nashville Health Care Council’s yearly financial prognostication luncheon that packed the Loews Vanderbilt Plaza Hotel last month.
KELLY PRICE |
Vital Signs
In picking healthcare reform’s so-called winners and losers, the hospital sector is typically at the top of the winners list. The logic goes that, by providing insurance coverage to 32 million more Americans, hospitals will have more paying patients and fewer whose healthcare bills end up as bad debt.
ERIN LAWLEY |
After the Disaster
Public Health Concerns after the Flood
Although the waters have receded, it will take a long time for Tennessee to recover from the damage caused as raging rivers raced through neighborhoods. As those impacted by the flood try to create a new sense of normal, healthcare professionals should be aware of both the physical and behavioral health hazards that still lay ahead.
CINDY SANDERS |
Gold Skin Care a Site for Testing of New JUVÉDERM Formulation
FDA Approves New Compound
Nashville-based Gold Skin Care and its Tennessee Clinical Research Center have been involved in a clinical trial for a new formulation that earlier this year received FDA approval. The product is a version of the dermal filler JUVÉDERM®, and patients are heartily endorsing the innovation, said board-certified dermatologist Michael Gold, MD.
SHARON H. FITZGERALD |
| REIMBURSEMENT & ACOs Focus |
Realignment: Why Physicians Are Knocking at the Hospital Door
In the best of situations, hospitals and physicians achieve a symbiotic relationship that is mutually beneficial and mutually lucrative. For the past few decades, the power pendulum has swung in the physician’s favor since hospitals cannot operate without doctors. Physicians, on the other hand, have enjoyed a variety of practice scenarios ranging from hospital competitor to hospital employee … independent contractor to office-based practitioner with little interest in what’s happening at the nearest acute care facility.
CINDY SANDERS |
Playing Well With Others
Building Strong Relationships in an Evolving Environment
In theory, hospital administrators, physicians and nurses are all on the same team with the same ultimate goal — delivering the highest quality of patient care possible. In practice, those relationships are easily strained as fiscal realities, misaligned objectives and strong personalities are factored into the equation.
CINDY SANDERS |
PHYSICIAN SPOTLIGHT: Fayetteville Internist Heads American College of Physicians
Ralston Merges Love of Medicine and Politics
When Fayetteville, Tenn. internist J. Fred Ralston, Jr., MD, FACP, recently took the helm of the American College of Physicians, he did it in service to his profession but also for a personal reason. “What I do in the ACP makes me stay sane about the frustrations I have in daily practice,” Ralston acknowledged with a chuckle.
SHARON H. FITZGERALD |
HEALTHCARE ENTERPRISE: Informatics Corporation of America Links Patient Data With Providers
Spinoff of Vanderbilt Research
First came last year’s HITECH Act, followed this year by the massive healthcare reform legislation. Both laws scream for electronic fixes to healthcare inefficiencies and rising costs. Offering solutions to meet those federal challenges is Nashville-based Informatics Corporation of America, which specializes in electronic sharing of clinical information.
SHARON H. FITZGERALD |
Fostering an Epidemic of Skin Cancer
Dermatologists Take Aim at Indoor Tanning
On an average day in America, more than 1 million people visit an indoor tanning salon. That’s why dermatologists nationwide have declared war on the practice, which research overwhelmingly has shown causes cancer.
SHARON H. FITZGERALD |
Nashville Healthcare Law: Health Care Reform: Top 10 Things Employers Need to Know
In late March, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care & Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010 were signed into law (together “the Act”), effectively ushering in a new era in healthcare. This sweeping legislation will radically alter the way healthcare is delivered and the way health insurance will be bought, sold and provided in the United States. The Act also imposes many new requirements on employer-sponsored group health plans. Failure to comply with those requirements may result in substantial monetary penalties. Healthcare providers are also employers, of course, and they will be drastically impacted by the following provisions like all other employers. This article is by no means intended to be a comprehensive look at the Act, rather it is a quick look at those provisions of the Act most likely to have a substantial impact on employers.
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Moral Medicine: A Modest Proposal
The biggest issue in healthcare reform is escalating costs. Without something changing our growth curve, we will be spending one out of every five dollars in the country on healthcare in 2017, one out of four in 2025 and one out of two by 2050. Clearly, something must be done.
DAVID STEVENS, MD, MA (Bioethics) |
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