By Kay Lazar As a phalanx of sign-carrying mothers rallied outside, their babies bundled against the earlymorning cold, Beverly Hospital trustees yesterday backed down from a plan to cease deliveries at the hospital’s natural birthing center, one of only two such facilities in the state. In a four-sentence statement from Northeast Health System, which owns […]

By Claire Cain Miller http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com American Well aims to reinvent the house call. If Roy Schoenberg, the start-up’s co-founder and chief executive, has his way, patients will no longer have to wait a month to see a doctor for an urgent sore throat, wait all day for a doctor to return their call or leave […]

BY CHRIS RIZO http://www.legalnewsline.com SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (Legal Newsline) – If the Illinois Supreme Court decides to strike down limits on medical malpractice awards it could mean fewer doctors practicing in the state, sources told Legal Newsline Tuesday. The state’s high court is examining the constitutionality of caps lawmakers placed on lawsuit awards. In 2005, state […]

By Val Willingham http://www.cnn.com (CNN) — Nearly half the respondents in a survey of U.S. primary care physicians said that they would seriously consider getting out of the medical business within the next three years if they had an alternative The survey, released this week by the Physicians’ Foundation, which promotes better doctor-patient relationships, sought […]

http://www.chteprescribing.com Primary care physicians in 12 select areas may be selected by The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to receive additional Medicare dollars under a new five-year project using certified electronic health records (EHR) systems. Each physician participant could receive up to $58,000, with a limit of $290,000 per practice, over the life […]

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Kay Lazar, Globe Staff The fear of being sued is driving Massachusetts physicians to order many tests, procedures, referrals to specialists and even hospitalizations for consumers that aren’t needed and drive up health costs by more than $1.4 billion a year, according to a new study that is the first of its kind. The Massachusetts […]

http://www.kaisernetwork.org Coverage, Access and Quality | Texas, Florida Facing Physician Shortages; Hispanics Largely Affected Texas will need an additional 40,000 doctors by 2025 to keep up with a growing population, particularly among Hispanics, the San Antonio Express-News reports. About 20,000 of the 37,000 doctors currently practicing in Texas will have retired or left their practices over the […]

Thomas Bodenheimer, M.D. http://content.nejm.org The editors asked several experts to share their perspectives on the crisis in U.S. primary care. Their articles, which address this crisis from six different angles, follow. We also brought the five U.S. contributors together for a roundtable discussion of the problems and potential solutions for training, practice, compensation, and systemic […]