by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Apr 14, 2015 | Quality Payment Program
If there is one message that came across loud and clear at the National Quality Forum, it is that “patient experience of care” is one of the primary ways that CMS wants to evaluate the care that providers render to patients. Not only is this compatible with the plan...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Apr 13, 2015 | Health Information Technology and Wound Care
I think it is important to remind physicians about the importance of proper wound care EHR workflow. Here is the link to an article I released back in October regarding the Ebola crisis and what could have been done differently. How Thoughtful EHR Design Might Have...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Apr 13, 2015 | Do the Right Thing: Thoughts on Quality
Last week I started talking about what I learned at the annual National Quality Forum meeting in Washington, DC. On the final day we heard Patrick Conway, MD, Chief Medical Officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), who is still a practicing...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Apr 9, 2015 | Do the Right Thing: Thoughts on Quality
I still think hydrocolloid dressings are one of the best ways to debride a wound with slough. One of my secrets to debride wounds that have a deep defect is to use Duoderm paste down in the “hole” and then cover it with a Duoderm pad. They bond together and when the...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Apr 8, 2015 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
This patient has a venous ulcer but he has also had prostate cancer with pelvic radiation and renal cell cancer with a lymph node biopsy on the left groin. He has lymphedema in the leg where he has this stasis ulcer. Watch the fluid weeping out of this ulcer....
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Apr 7, 2015 | Do the Right Thing: Thoughts on Quality
The 2014 Margolis paper questioned the effectiveness of hyperbaric oxygen therapy for diabetic foot ulcers. There are a lot of ways that “effectiveness” can be defined. Even if it’s not the best way to think about it, let’s consider “cost-effectiveness” because most...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Apr 6, 2015 | Cassandra Chronicles: Regulatory and Coverage Policy, Do the Right Thing: Thoughts on Quality, Fight the Good Fight
I just got back from the National Quality Forum meeting in Washington, DC. I’ll spend Mondays in April telling you what I learned about the conference, the theme of which was “Tackling Costs: The Quality Solution.” The Kaiser Foundation estimates that the average...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Apr 2, 2015 | Do the Right Thing: Thoughts on Quality
I love maggots for debriding inflammatory ulcers. I’ve used them for this purpose since the 1990s and we still don’t have anything better. The problem is the cost. They are so efficient and don’t cause pathergy in inflammatory ulcers. I’ve been able to debride wounds...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Apr 1, 2015 | Don't Miss This
This is a 76 year old lady from Mexico whose chest was horribly burned more than 70 years ago as a child in a fire. She never developed breasts because of the destruction of tissue on her chest wall. Her family brought her to me because of this tissue that looked like...
