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Physicians Foundation 2018 Survey Results

The Physicians Foundation has released the findings of its 2018 survey of U.S. physicians that examines a wide variety of factors impacting practice patterns, career plans and physician burnout.   With physicians in offices, emergency rooms, urgent cares, retail and other settings having an estimated one billion patient encounters a year, the survey underscores the overall impact of excessive regulatory/insurer requirements, loss of clinical autonomy and challenges with electronic health record (EHR) design/interoperability on physician attitudes toward their medical practice environment and overall dissatisfaction and burnout. Keep Reading

Medical staff prevails in legal battle over medical staff self-governance

By Tina Tedesco Tulare, California is a small town in the Central Valley best known as the milk producing capital of America. More than half of its 60,000 residents are enrolled in Medi-Cal and served by a small, 108-bed health care district hospital – Tulare Regional Medical Center (TRMC) – with a separate medical staff of about 175 physicians. Two years ago, this small agricultural community became ground zero in a high-profile battle testing the legal scope of a hospital medical staff’s independence and right to be self-governing. Fundamentally, the question ...

Medical staff prevails in legal battle over medical staff self-governance

A settlement has officially been reached in the case of the Tulare hospital embroiled in a bitter legal battle over the self-governance rights of its medical staff. The case stems from actions taken in 2016, when hospital administrators at Tulare Regional Medical Center (TRMC) terminated the entire medical staff and its duly elected officers. The hospital then adopted new medical staff bylaws in secret and without input from physicians at the hospital. The hospital dictated leadership and standards of medical care, seized control of the disciplinary process without legal or ...

Health Net to rescind recently announced payment policies

Since Health Net first notified physicians in March of planned changes to its modifier 25 and emergency services payment policies for Medicare and Medi-Cal lines of business, the California Medical Association (CMA) has been working to educate the payor about physician concerns with the new policies. Last month Health Net agreed to delay implementation of the new policies until July 1, 2018, to allow time to review provider concerns with the new policies and to continue discussions with CMA and other stakeholders. “We believe a more collaborative approach to identify alternative ...
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Award Honors To 10 Deserving Physicians and Community Leaders

The Santa Clara County Medical Association hosted nearly 200 members and their families for our Annual Awards Banquet where we awarded top honors in nine categories as well welcomed our new 2018-19 President, Kenneth Blumenfeld, MD. 2018 Award Winners: Outstanding Contribution to the Medical Association Thomas Dailey MD Outstanding Contribution in Medical Education John Tatman, MD Outstanding Achievement in Medicine Ruma Kumar, MD Outstanding Contribution in Community Service Suchada Nopachai, MD William C. Parrish Jr. Leadership in Healthcare Award William Parrish Jr. Citizen's Award John and Gini Mitchem Special Recognition Award SCCMA Alliance Foundation Accepted by Suzanne Jackson Benjamin Cory, MD Award Sameer Awsare, MD Robert D. Burnett, ...