On May 23, 2010, Cindy Abbott was standing on top of the world. She had spent the past 51 days climbing Mount Everest, the tallest mountain in the world, and had finally reached the summit. “I was very anxious to get off and get back down,” she says, adding that the summit is about the…
Two years ago, at the age of 102, rheumatologist Ephraim P. Engleman, MD, FACR, FACP, published a memoir, My Century, in which he detailed his personal and professional accomplishments, as well as his secrets to longevity. With his characteristic sense of humor, Dr. Engleman noted that the first secret to a long life is to…
In medicine, as in all other areas of human endeavor, we cannot really understand where we are if we don’t understand how we arrived here. American rheumatology traces its origins nine decades back to Europe, when the International Committee on Rheumatism was founded by Jan van Breeman in 1925 at a European meeting of medical…
Nobody likes waiting to see their physician. In fact, a whopping 97% of patients are frustrated by wait times at the doctor’s office, a study has reported.1 That’s a lot of unhappy patients. Fortunately, a practice can do many things to help keep patient appointments on time—beginning with proper scheduling techniques and monitoring patients’ progress…
A recent trend to incorporate patient-reported outcomes (PROs) in clinical research, and ultimately clinical practice, is a response to the need to better measure and treat what patients truly care about, and adapt to the changing healthcare environment, which increasingly includes patient satisfaction as a key metric for overall quality of care, a metric tied…
Computerization of healthcare in general, and medical records in particular, has opened additional areas of liability for medical practices that many may not be addressing. A data breach of patient records can have major financial and business impacts on the practice when they occur. Data Intrusions Increasing The number of data intrusions hit a record…
In a recent study, the use of anifrolumab in SLE patients was shown to be safe and effective, enabling some patients to decrease their oral steroids. Also, secukinumab has been approved in Europe to treat ankylosing spondylitis and psoriatic arthritis…
San Francisco is known for the Gold Rush, so it’s a particularly fitting place to collect a gold nugget. And so at the 2015 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting in the Golden Gate City in November, the ACR and the ARHP honored a group of distinguished individuals who have made significant contributions to rheumatology research, education and…
James K. Smith, MD, believes in thinking several moves ahead. Consider your opponent. Gauge your strategy. Be aggressive when you need to be. Those are key aspects of his philosophy in rheumatology—and chess. Initiation Dr. Smith’s love of chess started after he had started his family. “I first got involved in the game through my…
Two months into the transition, the ICD-10 code set is still not exactly the most enticing reading material. But there is still so much to learn and apply, that it is necessary for physicians, coders and billers to stay abreast of the coding and billing guidelines. Although all of the guidelines and conventions may be…