Doctors Must Become Doers to Preserve the Patient-Physician Relationship

Herbert L. Kunkle Jr, MD

The basic building block of the U.S. healthcare system is the patient-physician relationship. It always was and always will be the basis of care. Health care doesn’t occur or progress without understanding and respecting this relationship. No healthcare system, administrator, insurance company, nonclinical issue, or media perception should ever come between the patient and his or her physician.

Status Quo Is Stifling Innovation

Madeleine Lovette

We must change the course of the current direction of our nation’s health policy system,” keynote speaker and former U.S. Senator Norm Coleman told members of the Orthopaedic Political Action Committee (PAC), during a luncheon held in conjunction with the 2012 AAOS Annual Meeting. In his remarks, Sen. Coleman addressed current healthcare regulations, which he maintains are stifling healthcare innovation, and outlined his ideal course for the future.

Measuring the Success of EWI in Dollars and Sense

Madeleine Lovette

Last year was an extremely successful year in advocating for extremity war injury (EWI) research. Recently, Andrew N. Pollak, MD, who has been involved with these efforts for nearly a decade, sat down with AAOS Now to talk about the importance of investments in EWI research and the success achieved in this area through the efforts of the American Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS). AAOS Now: Dr.

The Demise of the CLASS Act

Neil M. Issar, BSc; Hassan R. Mir, MD; William T. Obremskey, MD, MPH; A. Alex Jahangir, MD; Manish K. Sethi, MD

The importance of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is undeniable, because it will transform the American healthcare landscape. In considering the extent to which health care will change in the next decade, however, one must recognize the dichotomy between passing legislation and executing policy. Although PPACA offers possibilities for tectonic shifts in American healthcare policy, questions surround the plan’s actual implementation and financial sustainability.

Temporary SGR Fix Approved

As this issue of AAOS Now went to press, the House and Senate had passed the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012. The Act extends current payments under the Medicare fee-for-service physician payment schedule through Dec. 31, 2012, thus averting a potential 27.4 percent cut under the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula, scheduled to go into effect on March 1, 2012.