All Entries Tagged With: "physician shortage"
National Nurse Practitioner Week highlights primary care shortage
If you haven’t already heard about it from the nurse practitioners (NP) at your organization, this week is National Nurse Practitioner (NP) Week. NPs are harnessing their spotlight to shine the light on the shortage of primary care providers in America—and how their work force can help combat that shortage.
The theme for the week is “Nurse Practitioners – 125,000 Solutions to the Primary Care Shortage.” The American Academy of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) offers a resource guide on its Web site explaining why this year’s theme was chosen.
“The shortage of primary care providers is a hot topic in the healthcare reform debate. NP Week is a good opportunity to showcase the many ways that NPs are the primary care providers of choice for many patients and to let others in your community know about the value of NP-delivered primary care,” the AANP states.
Be sure to wish the NPs on your medical staff a happy National Nurse Practitioner’s Week!
OIG recognizes necessity of ED call compensation
Hospitals struggling to cover emergency services probably sighed in relief at HHS’ latest advisory opinion, which recognizes that hospitals are often forced to pay physicians for providing emergency on-call services and that payment for such services will unlikely result in kickbacks as long as it represents fair market value.
Solution to the physician shortage – the virtual doctor
Many hospitals are looking for alternative means to provide inpatient services when clinicians are not available. For example, several facilities that have solved the problem of limited access to neurologists through the use of “virtual doctor” robots to assess stroke patients. Treatment for stroke is considered a medical emergency and requires rapid initial evaluation and prompt patient care plans. Through the use of telemedicine, physicians can conduct consultations over the Internet. Using bedside video-conferencing, physicians receive information from telemedicine medical teams in hospital emergency centers. This consultative approach provides prompt access to specialists and eliminates the need for patient transfer while providing competent clinical care (diagnosis and treatment) quickly.
Another innovative use of technology allows intensive care physicians to remotely monitor patients in a multitude of intensive care units. According to a company called VISICU, Inc. “almost 5 million patients are admitted to ICUs each year in the US and more than 500,000 of these patients die. Studies reveal that at least one in ten patients who die in ICUs every day would survive if dedicated intensivists were present in the ICU and managing their care.” Through the use of cameras, microphones, and high-speed computer data lines, access to this specialty care is available 24/7.
Use of this technology sounds like a very appropriate solution to physician shortages.
Carole La Pine, MSA, CPMSM, CPCS