Stories from Texas Medicine, June 2023

Recruitment After COVID: Help From TMA’s Practice Management and Consulting Services - 07/10/2023

With help from TMA’s practice management and consulting services, staffing challenges provide an opportunity for practices to grow and become more business savvy.

Mastering Quality Reporting: Ease the Challenge of Quality Reporting - 07/10/2023

Understanding the maze of quality reporting pathways may help ease the challenge.

Relief in Site: Physicians Say Setting Should Not Determine Medicare Payments - 06/07/2023

Physicians want to reform a Medicare policy that allows hospital-owned outpatient clinics to charge more than medical practices and ambulatory surgical centers for most medical procedures. This pay discrepancy pressures medical practices to merge in order to protect themselves from hospitals hot to acquire medical practices that, once bought, can collect much higher fees.

Judgment Calls: Court Victory Highlights Importance of Corporate Practice of Medicine Laws - 06/07/2023

Hospital Internists of Texas was pitted against a multibillion-dollar company in a corporate practice of medicine lawsuit. At the trial court level, a Travis County district court jury awarded the Austin medical practice more than $10.2 million.

At Your Service: Practices focus on patient experience and convenience - 06/05/2023

Practices focus on patient experience and convenience to compete in an ever-changing medical landscape.

Welcome MAT: Physicians Debunk Skepticism of Medication-Assisted Treatment - 06/05/2023

Many physicians have concerns about medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for substance use disorders. But a better understanding of MAT – combined with recent changes in federal law about prescribing these medications and required physician education on the subject – will allow a much broader group of doctors to help tackle the opioid crisis.

Reporting Redesign: Disease Surveillance Relies on Physicians - 06/05/2023

Infectious disease reporting relies on close ties between physicians and local public health entities, especially as COVID surveillance relaxes.

A Shelter From the Practice Viability Storm: TMA Braces Physicians Amid Economic Headwinds - 05/31/2023

TMA is here to help all practices – regardless of setting or payment model – thrive, remaining steady in its advocacy at the state and federal levels to protect physician autonomy and to defend against the corporate practice of medicine.