News 9/19/13

Despite an increase in hospital employment, more than half of all physicians worked for themselves in 2012 and 60 percent were in practices wholly owned by physicians, according to an AMA report. Other notable findings:

• Last year 29 percent of physicians worked either directly for a hospital or for a practice partially-owned by a hospital, compared to 16 percent in 2007/2008.
• The percentage of physicians who were practice owners in 2012 dropped eight percent from 2007/2008.
• Eighteen percent of physicians were in solo practice, compared to 24 percent five years ago.
• 45.5 percent of physicians are in a single specialty practice.

Despite the AMA’s conclusion that private practice “remains strong,” I predict we’ll see a different story in another five years. The ownership breakdown listed above indicates that younger physicians are less likely to be self-employed than their more senior peers. As the older physicians retire, the percentage of privately-owned practices will surely shrink.

PCMH practices report higher operating costs per patients than non-PCMH practices, according to an MGMA cost survey. Also higher: total medical revenue per patient at PCMH practices. The higher operating costs for PCMH practices are in part attributed to higher staff/patient and provider/patient ratios.

Amazing Charts names John Squire (Microsoft) president and COO.

ONC releases online tools for providers and HIEs to educate patients about the electronic sharing of health information.

MU Stage 2 is accelerating EMR-specific patient portal adoption, though the trend is negatively impacting best-of-breed vendors that are not as well equipped as EMR offerings, according to a KLAS report on patient portals. Athenahealth, Epic, and Allscripts were the top-performing vendors.

Emdeon earns high customer satisfaction ratings in a separate KLAS report that examined enterprise patient access solutions.

Quality Insights of Delaware REC is offering free, one-year subscriptions to NeHC’s Consumer eHealth Readiness Tool to up to 50 of its clients.

The AHRQ offers a toolkit to help office-based physicians and their staff improve their processes for tracking, reporting, and following-up with patients after lab tests. The guide includes an EHR evaluation tool to understand how a practice’s EHR can help with test ordering, tracking, reporting.

New Jersey-based Medical Transcription Billing Corp., a provider EHR/PM/RCM solutions for physicians, announces plans to conduct an IPO of its common stock.

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