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Health Care Health Care Reform Reflection

Simplify healthcare: A good start would be minimizing the uninformed and profit conflicted third parties…

Here is an example of how increased regulation from third parties attempts to control costs, but actually does the opposite. A middle aged patient whom I have seen in the past for benign palpitations called today because of atypical chest pain.  Although I have criticized the overuse of nuclear imaging studies, and probably order the fewest of […]

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Health Care Health Care Reform

The conflict of declining reimbursement…

Conflicted am I on reading of the strategy of a group of South Miami cardiologists who have written their patients complaining of the cuts to reimbursement, primarily cuts in imaging procedures.  A tension emerges from within upon reading the following quote from a “healthcare expert.” “I’m not at all sympathetic with the cardiologists,” said Robert […]

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Doctoring General Cardiology General Medicine Health Care

Not mastering the obvious is costing us now…

Being married to a palliative care doctor is enlightening in so many ways. As has been noted previously, CMS (government) decided that commonly ordered stress scans and ultrasounds of the heart are much less valuable.  Undoubtedly, there are many reasons for this, but at least one is likely the notion that there are too many […]

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General Cardiology Health Care

"Shadows" are now less valuable…

Another huge day for cardiologists today.  CMS, or medicare or the government or whoever has decided that cardiologists who read images are making too much money. Nuclear scans and echocardiograms (ultrasound) are being arbitrarily cut by up to 40 percent. These scans form the backbone of a cardiology office.  Although they require a substantial initial […]