by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Feb 18, 2020 | Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Healthcare Payment Policy
There is lot of interest in surrogate measures of wound outcome to capture important aspects of treatment beyond closure. Because it provides insight into the patient’s experience, Quality of life (QOL) is an obvious surrogate for healing rate. For your own safety,...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Feb 17, 2020 | Healthcare Payment Policy
In 1787, Catherine II (also known as Catherine the Great), a Russian Tsarina, set out on a tour of the Crimea, an area Russia had annexed from the Ottoman Empire. The area had been devastated by the Crimean War and was a mess. Grigory Potemkin, governor of the Crimea,...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Feb 14, 2020 | Healthcare Payment Policy
I was asked to take a look at a 50-page report on a wound center’s post-payment review of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) services. Nearly all the wounds that were treated were truly limb-threatening, and most of the patients got better. Unfortunately, their...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Feb 12, 2020 | Healthcare Payment Policy
Excerpted from Today’s Wound Clinic The hospital supply contracting process is complicated and slow. Physicians, however, can make purchasing decisions quickly and directly. Manufacturers need to get prepared for a dramatic shift to less-expensive wound...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Feb 11, 2020 | Healthcare Payment Policy
I changed my specialty code to Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine a few months ago. It was necessary because since I am Family Practice Board Certified, the data on Medicare spending for my patients was being compared to that of FP’s across the country. However, I...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Feb 7, 2020 | Healthcare Payment Policy
Even though I was a child, I remember the space race of the 1960’s. That’s because my Dad was at the School of Aerospace Medicine, where human physiology research was being conducted at a breakneck pace. To handle the problem that ink pens didn’t work...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Feb 4, 2020 | Healthcare Payment Policy
The reclassification of all services in the Hospital Based Outpatient Department (HOPD) to “general supervision” away from “direct supervision” has the potential to create chaos. While general supervision may be acceptable for some services (e.g. NPWT dressing changes...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jan 28, 2020 | Healthcare Payment Policy
I’ve talked to a lot of you lately and to save time, I have decided to write an open letter to manufacturers in the wound care space. This advice is free – which means no one will value it, but here is what I wish you were paying attention to: Medicare (at least)...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jan 27, 2020 | Healthcare Payment Policy
In October 2019, a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that waste accounts for roughly one-quarter of all U.S. healthcare spending. A conservative estimate of the cost of waste is over $900 billion annually. Former CMS...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jan 23, 2020 | Healthcare Payment Policy
The PA project accomplished its objective. HBOT utilization is now at a 10-year low, although that’s not entirely due to the completed prior authorization project. It is unfortunate CMS did not report how much the project cost to implement. We know it’s pointless to...
