Valeo Online

By Carole D. Christian and Theodore T. Myre, Jr. Partners, Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, LLP.

The recent passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“PPACA”) is likely to accelerate physician employment by hospitals.  Because of added burdens, requiring administrative time and monetary outlays, some have predicted the demise of solo and small physician practices.  Coming on the heels of the 2009 law requiring adoption of electronic medical records, private practitioners may find that PPACA’s push toward integration of health services is a force too powerful to resist.

By Jeffery A. Sexton, Managing Member: Arsenal Investment Advisors, LLC

The turmoil in world financial markets the past two years has caused many investors to question the “fairness” of this casino-like situation. Is a CD or 30-day U.S. Treasury bill the only safe investment for Main Street investors to purchase now? Is the game really that rigged in favor of the house? What happened to just buying Pfizer or Merck and holding on for twenty or thirty years until retirement while collecting nice dividends along the way? Unfortunately, you and your investment advisors (and bankers and real estate agents and CPAs and attorneys) are the unwitting victims of a grand academic experiment at the hands of my professors at the University of Chicago and their colleagues at other top business schools. The slick marketing machine of Wall Street with its bottomless budget only made matters worse.

By Calvin R. Rasey, President, Physicians Financial Services

Due to the current economic conditions many physicians have found it necessary to look into different strategies to help their hard earned assets from lawsuits, litigation, as well as taxation.  In a recent conversation with a physician, the following question was brought to my attention.  “Calvin I own a considerable amount of investment property and I don’t know how my assets should be owned in order to provide some protection, as well as tax savings for me and my family?”  The answer to this question is complex due to each unique situation.

By Eric Gunderson, CEO, Valeo Communications

Often times when I talk to doctors about their marketing plan, they tell me they rely primarily on word-of-mouth from their existing patients to bring in new patients.  This makes sense since there is certainly no more powerful form of promotion than having your own patients solicit new business for you.

The danger of relying on word-of-mouth, however, is the control you forfeit in terms of what is being said about your practice and whether or not your patients are sending you the kinds of cases you really want.

Dr. John Glaser, Chairman of the Healthcare CIO SmartBrief

For most providers data has been a secondary consideration. Data is often seen as less worthy of investment than areas such as equipment, buildings and IT support of clinical, operations and finance processes. Most IT discussions center on applications, with the focus of the application being improvements in important processes such as ordering tests or scheduling a patient.

Process improvements and investments in buildings and equipment will always be important. However, the management of data deserves the same level of importance. Increased accountability for care performance and interoperable electronic health records will lead to data graduating from the kid’s table to the adult’s table at Thanksgiving.

By Eric Gunderson, CEO, Valeo Communications

Technically Speaking. By Pamela Lewis Dolan, amednews staff. Posted April 26, 2010.

The number of people using personal health records has doubled in the past year. But those users still account for only 7% of the American patient population, according to one recent survey.

That survey also found that if patients are going to be pushed toward greater PHR adoption by anyone, it’s going to be by the health care system representatives they trust the most — their physicians.

By Christian R. Cox, JD, moloney + o’neil commercial insurance & surety 

Add identity thieves to the long list of crooks targeting doctors and their patients.  Identity theft, and especially medical records identity theft, is the fastest growing crime in America.  Every day, new evidence of this escalating crime wave is brought to light:

• April 7, 2010, Phoenix, AZ: “Man charged with posing as fertility doctor to molest people.” A man allegedly stole the identity of a Scottsdale, Arizona physician so he could sexually molest people while pretending to give them physical examinations. The man is facing similar charges in California, where he’s accused of stealing the identity of a San Francisco doctor and posing as a “Dr. Richardson” at a Los Angeles clinic.