by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Feb 12, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
Big news is that California’s insurance commissioner has launched an investigation into Aetna after one of its former medical directors admitted under oath that all the decisions about whether to approve or deny care were made by nurse case managers and he never...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Feb 6, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
The math for hyperbaric oxygen can be confusing. I wrote an article for Today’s Wound Clinic about the ethics of off-label hyperbaric oxygen therapy. I said I’d provide the math here. The earth’s atmosphere weighs down on us with a specific amount of pressure. If you...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Feb 6, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
It’s official that we are in a flu epidemic. There are many reasons but one unique and worrying feature of this season is the fact that the ‘young invincibles’ are dying. Two things to remember are: people who have gotten the flu vaccine are less likely to die even if...
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, Obesity & Wound Care
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...
