For too many physicians, primary care practice feels like a shoe that just doesn’t fit. Like bewitched sisters in the children’s story, Cinderella, they’re cutting off parts of their feet in order to fit the shoes they believe they must wear.
The nation’s big corporations are going to great lengths to get employees to exercise, lose weight, eat better and quit smoking. But all-too-often these corporate wellness programs don’t engage employees’ physicians.
In this first of an ongoing series of articles offering medicolegal guidance for holistic/integrative practitioners, legal expert Alan Dumoff provides insight into the value of informed consent, and provides guidelines for drafting effective and protective informed consent forms.
Holistic Primary Care’s upcoming “Heal Thy Practice: Transforming Primary Care” conference (June 5-7, 2009, Westin La Paloma, Tucson) will create a much-needed forum to empower primary care doctors who want to practice prevention-focused, patient-centered primary care. With the burden of chronic disease higher than ever, costs spiraling out of control, and the health care system on the verge of collapse, the need has never been greater!
A forward-thinking California insurance company has introduced a new malpractice coverage policy specifically tailored to protect holistic/integrative doctors. Developed in collaboration with the American College for the Advancement of Medicine (ACAM) and other physician groups, and based on an arbitration model, the policy will save doctors money while covering many holistic services excluded by conventional malpractice insurers.
Sleep apnea is common, debilitating and sometimes deadly. In the past, diagnosis involved costly sleep labs. New home monitoring devices provide greater patient comfort, save money, and generate revenue for primary care. Dr. Lee Surkin shares his clinical experience.
Holistic Primary Care’s Heal Thy Practice: Transforming Primary Care, conference has been re-scheduled for June 5-7, 2009, at the Westin Paloma in Tucson, AZ. The new Spring program offers considerable savings and several new features that will increase the value for physician attendees.
If well designed and carefully implemented, electronic medical records (EMRs) can improve patient care, reduce medical errors and save physicians a lot of money. But cost factors and time demands have conspired so that fewer than 10% of all solo and small group practices have EMRs. A growing number of IT-savvy physicians, software designers and policymakers hope to change that.
Disciplinary action from a state medical board is among every physician’s worst nightmares, and in some states, doctors who practice holistic medicine are especially vulnerable. But if you know your state laws, practice scrupulously, obtain informed consent from patients, and you’ve got competent legal backup, you have little to worry about, according to Alan Dumoff, JD, an attorney who specializes in representing integrative physicians.
The specific treatment a doctor gives is only a small part of the total clinical experience. The key to creating an effective healing experience is to create a vision that reaches below the surface of conscious awareness, where 95% of what we take in is processed. To give patients a nurturing, healing experience, we need to create nurturing, compassionate, empowering input that touches people on many different levels.
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