by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Aug 16, 2018 | Don't Miss This, Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
Wounds are a symptom. Our job is to find the disease. Here’s a patient with a non-healing abdominal wound after a ruptured aneurysm. He’s lost the outer third of his eyebrows. Today one of his labs came back very high. What lab was it? If you guessed his...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Aug 15, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
Make plans to join me at the annual American Professional Wound Care Association clinical conference in Baltimore September 6-8. I’ll be talking about whether wounds are really a chronic disease, a topic that has big implications in the area of healthcare policy, and...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Aug 14, 2018 | Cassandra Chronicles: Regulatory and Coverage Policy, Pressure Cooker: Rethinking Pressure Ulcers, US Wound Registry
The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) spent 6 months reviewing a proposed rule to ease Medicare-participation requirements called, “Regulatory Provisions to Promote Program Efficiency, Transparency and Burden Reduction.” CMS has promised to “reform...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Aug 8, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
There seems to be a lot of confusion between Patient Reported Outcomes (PRO) and Quality Measures. I see those terms get used interchangeably. A PRO is a measurement of patients’ perception of their own health status or quality of life. A PRO instrument is a...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Aug 8, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
I got my MIPS score back. I will blog about the details over time, but check out the image below of the “cost per beneficiary measure” which in Year One did NOT contribute to my composite MIPS score, but which was provided for me to review. I am a Family Practice...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jul 31, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
Most people don’t realize how much end-of-life counseling that wound care doctors do. It’s not just patients with terminal cancer who have wounds. There are a lot of patients whose wounds are harbingers of death, including extensive calciphylaxis lesions and “Kennedy...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jul 20, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
If you want to know where to find the best value for money ever, check out the Alliance of Woundcare Stakeholder’s newsletter. I’ve listed below only a few of the issues that the Alliance has reviewed and in most cases, on which it has submitted thoughtful comment...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jul 18, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
About 4 years ago I went to spend a few days volunteering in Haiti with the organization, Live Beyond. Just before I left, I got a group email from the trip organizers about an outbreak of the Chikungunya virus. “The Chicken WHAT?” I had never heard of it. I was...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jul 16, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
July 4th may be an important day in U.S. history. However, July 5th is an important day in British history. The British National Health Service (NHS) turned 70 on July 5th, 2018. As the U.S. political left publicly embraces socialism, and as more Americans walk away...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jul 13, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
In April, Texas Medical Association (TMA) leaders delivered 50 specific recommendations on how Congress should fix Medicare and the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA). The 21-page document was the result of a meeting between TMA leaders and U.S....
