Monthly Archives: July 2016

I am conflicted when I travel. Do I savor the new city and adventure in small doses or try to see as much as I can? I favor the former but often find myself navigating like the latter. For instance, during a recent visit to NYC, we scurried from activity to activity, hungry pizza rats in […]

SHM & Hospital Medicine in the News: July 7 – 21, 2016 The following are among the top hospital medicine and SHM-related topics in mainstream and healthcare-centric news coverage. For the full stories, click on the hyperlinks below: Hospital groups’ demands that the CMS postpone star ratings after concerns over their accuracy and validity in […]

Despite aggressive criticism, CMS is proceeding to release its star ratings for hospitals this month. Hospital advocates have been among the most vocal opponents, citing two primary concerns: The ratings vastly oversimplify a complex set of metrics. There are no concessions for social determinants of illness. Ashish Jha, MD, a professor at Harvard’s T.H. Chan […]

  I had planned on writing on MACRA and the inability of those who criticize the law to offer up alternatives to fix the flaws.  I got tired of the conclusions from the skeptics: let providers be and they will do the right thing.  That is a recipe for the pendulum to swing too far […]

One of the best parts of my “job” as a more-or-less emeritus member of SHM’s Practice Analysis Committee is the chance to be involved up close and personal in the development, analysis, and reporting of the biannual State of Hospital Medicine (SoHM) survey. In fact, I’ve either led or been integrally involved in every SoHM […]

This issue of SHM & Hospital Medicine in the News features: The Boston Globe’s coverage of the growing presence of nocturnists in U.S. hospitals and the associated improvements in patient care and satisfaction The mental health bill that recently cleared the House of Representatives that was proposed in an attempt to address the nationwide shortage […]