By BRETT BRUNE Houston Chronicle Dr. Swarna Balasubramaniam is an experienced surgeon hired by Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, which graded her as an “A candidate” for her top-tier surgical training, bright personality and practice-building acumen. But the Mayo Medical School graduate, who applied five months ago for a Texas medical license, is still waiting for permission to […]

By BLYTHE BERNHARD The Orange County Register http://www.ocregister.com In Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Bush said he wants “to protect good doctors from junk lawsuits” through changes in the medical malpractice system. Bush has touted a nationwide cap on malpractice awards for pain and suffering. The cap is modeled after a law that’s […]

By John Bellatti M.D. Home Rumors of my retirement are much exaggerated. I am an orthopedic surgeon in my 20th year of practice here in Kona. I read the Jan. 17 article in a Big Island newspaper on the M.D. shortage with great interest, including “don’t fracture a bone in Kona because there’s not an […]

The Associated Press The top U.S. surgeon in Iraq was among the 12 soldiers killed when a Black Hawk helicopter crashed near Baghdad, the Pentagon confirmed this week. Col. Brian D. Allgood, whose father and two uncles served in Vietnam, had spent more than 20 years in the military. “Brian was a wonderful human being,” […]

By Bruce Japsen Tribune staff reporter http://www.chicagotribune.com An outcry over ads nudging consumers to ask their doctors for purple pills, depression remedies or other brand-name prescription drugs hasn’t stopped an escalation of direct-to-consumer marketing in health care. In fact, as spending on such ads continues to climb, a new television commercial has introduced an entirely […]

http://www.prnewswire.com Commercial insurance premiums continued their decline in all but catastrophe-exposed areas during the fourth quarter of 2006, with insurers willing to lower prices and place fewer restrictions on coverage to get new business, according to the latest market survey by The Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers. “There is no underwriting,” a broker from […]

David McCann prepares physicians to respond when tragedy strikes By Rebecca Pollard Pierik http://www.umassmag.com

The Insurance professionals only source for News MphasiS Healthcare Solutions (MHS), a provider of health benefit management and business process outsourcing (BPO) services, announced today that it has entered into a three-year agreement with Resolve Health Plan Administrators, LLC (“Resolve”), based in Ormond Beach, Fla. Resolve is a third-party administrator (TPA) which provides claims management […]

http://healthcare-economist.com Today, I will review an interesting article by Glied and Zivin (2002) examining how physicians adjust their practice style when the HMO share of patients changes (note: the authors implicitly assume all HMOs pay physicians via capitation). First we will look at the three theoretical models the authors develop. Models 1. Excess capacity model. […]