-
_Yes Virginia, they really do exist._ So here’s the story. The family of a trauma victim, a motor vehicle collision, is met outside the ICU by a lawyer saying that the particular vehicle in which they were traveling has a defect and he and his firm would be happy to represent them. The family never…
-
In October, 2007 CMS (Medicare) proposed a list of eight _preventable_ conditions that result in a prolongation and increase in cost of care to the hospitalized patient. These are what CMS terms **_never events_**. CMS is trying to couch this in terms of _patient safety_ but if you look at the list, there are only…
-
As any Mac user who deals with Microsoft Exchange invites will tell you Exchange screws up the time zone information. What this means is that you will likely miss your meetings. Not a good thing. Justin Hartman has recently given you his solution to this problem. I haven’t tested it but in looking at it…
-
OK, first off this part of my practice is over and I’ve moved on. But let me relay a story of how CMS (that’s Medicare for the uninitiated) works. I was asked by one of my local _breast surgeons_ if I would see a patient for immediate breast reconstruction with implants. The patient was to…
-
An _Ivory Tower_ is supposed to be the tertiary referral center where they know everything and can take care of all difficult patients. So why is it when I have a specific need for a higher level of care that one of my _local_ Level 1 trauma centers, University of California, San Diego, balked. I…
-
Yeah, I did something stupid and had to reinstall my server OS — again. I thought I’d be OK but my mail backup was about a day old. I’ve used [mailbfr][1] before and it worked great but this time I kept getting errors. It seemed that mailbfr wasn’t copying over the `skipstamp` file. What I…
