Past Issues

2008

• Vol 2/No 5: Guide to Health Advocacy
  The Need for Advocacy
  The Clinician’s Role
  Effective Approaches
• Vol 2/No 4: Consumer-driven Healthcare
  Diagnosing the Health Insurance Problem
  Patients as Decision Makers
  CDHC Prognosis
• Vol 2/No 3: Evidence-based Medicine
  Payers are now taking the lead in using data to restructure reimbursement and develop guidelines and best practices. Clinicians must understand how this may affect them and their practice.
• Vol 2/No 2: Emergency Planning
  Without a snowstorm or hurricane threatening, or a code-orange security advisory looming on the horizon, it may be only human to ignore disaster plans. Emergency planning takes time, energy, and money, but being prepared is invaluable when a disaster actually strikes.
• Winter 2007/Spring 2008: Personal & Professional Growth
  Medicine is an all-encompassing profession. It involves science, business, communications, and so much more. It’s also a continually evolving field, with a constant barrage of clinical discoveries, technological developments, and business challenges that affect day-to-day practice. With so much going on, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. Sometimes it pays for clinicians to take a step back and make sure their professional and personal lives are on the right track.

2007

• Fall/Winter 2007: Effective Communications
  Most people think they are good communicators. How hard can it be to talk to people? We do it every day. But how well do we do it under pressure? And how well do we do it when the other person is from a different culture? Think of all the miscommunicationsÑand missed communicationsÑthat occur each day with friends, family, and neighbors. If we stopped to think about what we say and how we say it, could we avoid some of these misunderstandings?
• Summer 2007: Error-Proofing your Practice
  The 1999 report from the Institute of Medicine, entitled ÒTo Err Is Human,Ó created shock waves when it reported that up to 98,000 deaths in U.S. hospitals each year could be attributed to medical errors. Since then, healthcare professionals have been actively engaged in the search for solutions.
• Spring 2007: Guide to Well-Being
  It’s one of the great ironies of healthcare that the ones in charge of taking good care of others’ health often don’t have time to take care of their own health and well-being. Who has time to plan a career path when there’s a line of patients waiting who need attention now? Who can fit an exercise plan or healthy, relaxing meal into whirlwind days?

2006

• Summer 2006: Error-Proofing Your Practice
  As physician assistants and nurse practitioners assume more expansive roles in the healthcare system, they share the challenge and responsibility of preventing medical errors. In communities across the country, these primary-care professionals work in tandem with physicians on the front line of patient care, providing critical services to families and individuals of all ages.