Insight, analysis & opinion from Joe Paduda
A crazy week indeed. Here’s a few of the more striking things that happened while we were all doing our day jobs. A minute in an ER costs 82 cents. Surgical ICU; $1.43. Orthopedic OR; $12. A terrific piece in … Continue reading Friday catch up
Read More...Way back in January I posted my 10 predictions for work comp in 2015. Usually I do a mid-year review how things are going; it was such a busy summer I haven’t had time till now. So, here we go… … Continue reading Predictions for work comp; how am I doing?
Read More...Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs are state-based databases containing patient, prescriber, and pharmacy-specific information on controlled substances. 49 states have PDMPs; the lone holdout is Missouri, due to a whack job legislator who’s totally unfounded worries about privacy are preventing the … Continue reading PDMPs – what they are and why you should care.
Read More...Yesterday’s post about testing work comp patients for opioids struck several nerves; perhaps the most sensitive involves frustration on the part of payers unhappy about paying for tests prescribed by docs who don’t read the results. That and the outrageous prices … Continue reading Drug testing explained – part 2
Read More...Some blame “Obamacare” for pretty much everything; high insurance costs, increasing deductibles, access issues (real and imagined), narrow networks with fewer physicians, hospital closures, global warming (oh, wait, no such thing). And worst of all, this is all due to the … Continue reading There’s no such thing as an “Obamacare” health plan
Read More...The capstone to an excellent NCCI AIS was provided by WCRI Exec Dir Dr. Rick Victor and his counterpart at CWCI, Alex Swedlow. Rick led off with my LEAST favorite topic – physician dispensing of drugs to work comp claimants. … Continue reading Controlling work comp medical – Swedlow and Victor weigh in
Read More...It’s a big day for we commie socialists; hope your International Workers’ Day is filled with tributes to the proletariat… Workers’ comp While the world was at RIMS, I was otherwise engaged. Heard from several folks that the MedRisk event was … Continue reading May Day catch-up
Read More...After several attempts to get the ProPublica and NPR reporters working the work comp beat to see both sides of a very complex “system”, better understand the drivers and dynamics, and correct their errors publicly, I’m giving up. Clearly, they don’t want to hear … Continue reading ProPublica’s slanted “reporting” is a public disservice
Read More...Dr Rebecca Yang discussed the correlation of fee schedules and associated physician billing activity. Key takeaways There’s somewhat of a correlation between low office visit reimbursement rates and higher incidence of physician dispensing. evidence from CA indicates that when th … Continue reading Lower fee schedules, increase costs?
Read More...Yesterday ProPublica published the first in what is apparently a series of articles on the workers comp systems around the country. This first effort focused on ‘reforms’ and generally indicated these are driven by big employers seeking to cut workers … Continue reading ProPublica’s demolition of workers’ comp
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