by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Dec 17, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
The 2018 Quality Payment Program Exception Application period ends on December 31, 2018 If you are a practitioner who is subject to the Merit Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), for the 2018 reporting year, there are two types of exceptions for which you might be...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Dec 13, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
Two of my patients have told me that during open enrollment (which just ended) they were told that traditional Medicare was no longer available and they had to choose a Medicare Advantage (MA) Plan. I have advised several wound care patients to change from an MA plan...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Dec 12, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
Austin Public Health and the Austin Transportation Department is partnering with three CDC epidemiologists to look at the health risks of dockless scooters. I’m waiting for the CDC to investigate injuries from patient scooters, which I am seeing with increasing...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Dec 10, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
Last week CMS rejected a quality measure developed by the US Wound Registry (USWR) which was the Appropriate Use of Surgical Dressings from a DME for patients with wounds. That quality measure was designed to drive the electronic ordering of wound dressings for home...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Dec 6, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
This week I saw a lady who has already lost one leg due to ischemia. Now her right foot has been “turning red” (her words) and she’s started sleeping in a chair due to foot pain. I showed her the way her foot changes color from dependency (photo 1)...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Dec 4, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
Late last Friday night my son called to tell me that President George HW Bush had died. The students at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M were on their way to the Bush school campus for a candlelight vigil, a few photos of which...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Nov 29, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
Every time someone gives one of those “how wounds heal” lectures, it starts with “the first phase of wound healing is hemostasis,” and we think to ourselves, “Yeah, yeah, everybody knows that part . . .” Lately I’ve been paying more attention to the issue of...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Nov 28, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
Earlier this week I was showing a patient that, while his wound might look like it was still open, in fact, most of it was covered with skin. When the epithelial cells first migrate, they are translucent and you have to get the light at an angle to determine whether...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Nov 26, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
Since I’ve been left to figure out this quality thing for wound care pretty much on my own, I’ve had a lot of ups and downs. One of my goals (but not the only one) is to develop quality measures to help practitioners and patients survive the increasing pressure of...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Nov 21, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
By way of explanation, when we first made the transition to ICD-10, there was an article about the 16 most absurd codes and my daughter had already been in the emergency room with one of them (W55.41XA: Bitten by pig, initial encounter). So, yesterday, when she...
