Staff News Writer

The American Hospital Association (AHA) recently released a toolkit to help hospitals and health systems reduce preventable inpatient admissions for ambulatory care sensitive conditions. These conditions could be avoided with adequate primary care, such as asthma, low back pain and uncomplicated pneumonia.

Skeptics worry that the benefits of telemedicine may be outweighed by diminished privacy and security of medical information and loss of the therapeutic value tied to hands-on encounters between patients and their physicians. The December issue of Virtual Mentor, the AMA’s online ethics journal, considers this issue from a variety of angles.

Avoid making one of the 4 common mistakes while studying for the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1. An expert gives advice for studying smartly.

Genomic-based diagnosis and treatment of hypertension is still in its infancy, but there are cues physicians can use today to improve outcomes around hypertension.

A “bounty-hunter” Medicare program that takes back payments from physicians must be overhauled, physicians told the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in a letter, pointing to a two-year backlog of appeals and prohibitive expenses that result from excessive audits.

A recent article in the AMA Alliance magazine Physician Family suggests these ways to prepare your family for the holiday season. Here are a few tips to help you merge clinical and call schedules with the extra seasonal tasks that need attention.

With the release of the 2015 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule final rule Oct. 31, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) made it official: funding for independent continuing medical education (CME) will not be subject to reporting under the Physician Payments Sunshine Act as initially proposed by the agency earlier this summer.

For new physicians, getting your research published in a medical journal helps establish yourself as an expert. Getting published isn’t easy so follow these tips from Edward H. Livingston, MD, deputy editor of clinical content at JAMA.