By Michael Nissenbaum, CPA.

Once seen as impervious to the global financial crisis, physicians have now begun to feel the brunt of the economic downturn.  Many primary care physicians and specialists report seeing fewer patients today, as compared to one year ago. 
 
Parents defer optional pediatric visits, while other patients postpone or cancel procedures typically used to exhaust remaining deductibles at year’s end.  For example, gastroenterologists who previously had end-of-year waiting lists for colonoscopies report having immediate availability at the close of 2008.  Healthcare consumers are choosing not to move ahead with …

In our personal lives we are accustomed to signing contracts full of “fine print” and “legalese”: technical legal language that is not readily understood or appreciated except with the aid of an attorney such as credit card agreements, software licenses, insurance contracts, home closing documents.  Much of the time these contracts are mass produced and cannot be altered, so we don’t waste time reading them. 
However, in professional medical practice, there are documents that are “made to order” – drafted by an attorney upon request.  These include: physician employment agreements; shareholders’ …

By Jonathan Teich, M.D.
Physicians can do much to facilitate the selection and adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) and e-prescribing systems, including clinical decision support (CDS) technologies that bring important information to the physician’s attention just when it is most needed. 
 
CDS has been shown to produce very significant improvements in quality, safety, efficiency and cost when properly implemented; however, sometimes it is not utilized to its full effectiveness, due to barriers related to design and communication.   The physician champion participates in design, selection, testing, and communication to others, and plays a vital role …

By Steven A. Eisenberg
 
“Doc are you telling me you built a time machine . . . out of a Delorean?  The way I see it, if you’re gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style.”  Exchange between Dr. Emmett L. Brown and Marty McFly, Back to the Future.
 
For lawyers representing health care providers, there are days where we feel like we are getting into our Delorean, ready to take a trip back in time.  Why?  Because the landscape is looking very much like …

A recent study reveals that physicians prescribe placebo treatments in clinical practice on a regular basis – a practice that on its face appears to violate professional ethics and raises questions about how and why placebos are being used, the propriety of their use, and the very way in which “placebo effect” ought to be conceptualized.