by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jan 30, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
Our last guest post by the esteemed Dr. Helen Gelly, CEO of HyperbaRXS in Atlanta, GA, was so popular that I just had to have her back in this space! As always, her insights are both incisive and much-needed. Enjoy! –CF It has been said that “you can’t manage...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jan 23, 2018 | Don't Miss This, Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Nutrition & Wound Healing
Forget about the flu epidemic. At least it’s pretty easy to figure out when a patient has the flu. I feel sure I have missed some patients with wounds due to low Vitamin D. The Vitamin-D deficiency epidemic is ridiculous. What scares me is not that 80% of the tests I...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jan 22, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
It’s Year Two. I can’t decide if that conjures up the image of primitive man making the second straight line on the wall of the cave, or Captain Kirk dictating into the ship’s log… probably the latter. It’s the second year of the Quality Payment Program (QPP)...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jan 17, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
It’s time for a new acronym. You might not have heard of an organization called MedPAC, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. MedPAC has a lot of influence and no power. Or maybe it’s the other way around. It is an independent US federal body...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jan 12, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
Driving into work today I caught the NPR story with Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. I had no idea that the effectiveness of the flu vaccine varies so much from year to year! Some years it is nearly zero and...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jan 8, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
Like every hospital, everyone in my clinic received the flu vaccine. Despite this, 30% of my staff became ill with the flu (confirmed via testing) which is unprecedented in my memory. According to the CBS Evening News, flu cases nationwide are “up sharply,” based on...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Dec 29, 2017 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Lymphatic Imaging & Lymphedema
I thought I would wind up 2017 with something that I hope will be a useful tool in 2018. Dr. Jane Armor at the Sinclair School of Nursing, University of Missouri spearheaded the American Lymphedema Framework Project (ALFP). The goal was a systematic review of all the...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Dec 15, 2017 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
It has taken a decade. In 2008 I put together a program called “Pressure Ulcers and the Law” which I patterned after the programs on birth injuries and the law that changed the way cerebral palsy cases were handled. It was demonstrated that most cases of CP happen...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Dec 11, 2017 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
On Thursday, Dec. 7th 2017, the FDA issued draft guidance explaining which clinical decision support (CDS) tools won’t be considered devices (and thus will NOT require FDA clearance). This is part of the homework that the FDA needed to do to adhere to the...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Dec 8, 2017 | Don't Miss This, Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
The photo above is a pretty classic case of vasculitis, with palpable purpura, and these lesions HURT. The patient is a young healthy school teacher and we never found the cause. This is a leukocytoclastic vasculitis, too. This patient, who has a lot of medical...
