by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Nov 20, 2024 | Fight the Good Fight
A patient sent me a photo of this Explanation of Benefit (EOB) from their secondary insurance company, referring to a claim from a hospital based wound center (HOPD). It shows that the hospital charged $11,060.00 for a wound debridement in the HOPD. Medicare’s...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Nov 18, 2024 | Fight the Good Fight
Attorney Knicole Emanuel recently blogged about Medicare audits. It’s a good news/bad news story. The good news is that a physician who was determined by an auditor to have been “over paid” by $5 million ended up owing NOTHING. The bad news is that the cost of taking...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Nov 15, 2024 | Fight the Good Fight
I blog so much about the importance of checking and supplementing wound care patients with Vitamin D, that’s it’s probably getting old. However, I just can’t help myself. This is one of the few problems that is simple and cheap to fix. In addition to the fact that low...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Nov 13, 2024 | Fight the Good Fight, Nutrition & Wound Healing
I have no affiliation with any pharmaceutical company, and I continue to be cautious about the Glucagon-like peptide receptor agonist (GLP-1 RA) craze. However, I am paying attention to this family of drugs because for more than three decades I have watched with a...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Nov 11, 2024 | Fight the Good Fight
As anyone knows who has had surgery recently, you can nearly forget about getting a prescription for even short-term use of narcotics. These restrictions developed in response to a national opioid crisis that continues to decimate many areas of the country....
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Nov 4, 2024 | Fight the Good Fight
There’s a new concept for calculating obesity called the Body Roundness Index (BRI), which may be a more accurate way to understand obesity and healthcare risk than the Body Mass Index (BMI). That’s because visceral obesity is an important risk factor associated with...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Nov 4, 2024 | COVID-19, Fight the Good Fight
A large retrospective study just published in JAMA Open Network suggests that elevated body mass index (BMI) in both children and young adults was associated with an increased risk of post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC), or long COVID. This study is...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Oct 31, 2024 | Cellular / Tissue-Based Products, CTP / Skin Substitutes, Fight the Good Fight, Quiz / Survey
The results are in! Given similar efficacy and/or effectiveness among a group of CTPs/skin subs, the ideal choice for a patient would be: A. The most expensive one. B. The one with the highest patient copay. C. The one that requires the most applications to be...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Oct 31, 2024 | Fight the Good Fight, Nutrition & Wound Healing
Chu and colleagues have published a wonderful article in Advances in Skin & Wound Care, High-Quality Dietary Protein: The Key to Healthy Granulation Tissue – available open access. It contains a wealth of scientific and practical information emphasizing that...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Oct 25, 2024 | Cellular / Tissue-Based Products, CTP / Skin Substitutes, Fight the Good Fight, Quiz / Survey
Create your own user feedback survey Caroline Fife, M.D.Dr. Fife is a world renowned wound care physician dedicated to improving patient outcomes through quality driven care. Please visit my blog at CarolineFifeMD.com and my Youtube channel...