The Need for Fairness in Healthcare
In a perfect world, healthcare access and provision would be fair for all people, regardless of ethnicity, race, religion, gender, socioeconomic status, geographic location, language, age, disability, and other variables. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. To help address disparities in healthcare and improve patient outcomes, here is some guidance for practicing patient-centered and culturally competent healthcare. 

You may have staffed your practice with well-qualified people, but now they need proper training to understand your practice and its culture, their role within your practice, your policies and procedures, patient population, state and federal requirements such as HIPAA and OSHA, and other office practices. (If you need help with hiring, read our blog article, “Hiring the Best Staff for Your Practice”!)

A patient suffers cardiac arrest while waiting in the exam room. An elderly visitor falls in the waiting room, is complaining of leg pain and is unable to get up. A diabetic staff member passes out from hypoglycemia. These are just a few examples of unexpected medical emergencies that could happen in a medical office.

If you’re thinking about retirement, it’s prudent to start planning well in advance. If you are a solo practitioner, will you sell or wind down your practice? If you are in a group practice or employed, what are your obligations regarding providing notice of retirement? What are your state licensing board’s requirements regarding retirement? How will you retain your medical and business records? How will you notify your staff and patients of your plan to retire? What do your contracts with health insurers require when you retire from practice? Do you need to purchase professional liability insurance “tail coverage”? 

Introduction to Integrative Medicine
Integrative medicine is an approach to wellness that is growing in popularity in the United States. It is patient-centered and combines conventional medicine and complementary medicine to treat the person as a whole. It addresses many factors, including the physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and environmental influences on a person’s health status. Integrative medicine focuses on the broader concepts of health that promote a person’s overall health and future well-being. Reviews and clinical studies have shown positive outcomes for patients and providers who participate in integrative medicine programs.

What Workplace Bullying Looks Like 
Bullying is harmful, targeted behavior that may be directed to one person, or a group of people. It might be spiteful, offensive, mocking, or intimidating. Bullying can range from being overtly obvious, such as yelling, to subtle, such as using condescending language. It is a repeated behavior that manifests from a real or perceived power imbalance and is often intended to control, embarrass, undermine, threaten, or otherwise harm the targeted person or group.

Examples of bullying include:

While most healthcare providers are compassionate and want to provide optimal care to their patients, everyone has biases and knowledge gaps that may hinder the provision of quality healthcare. These biases and knowledge gaps can lead to:

• Barriers to care
• Miscommunications
• Misdiagnosis
• Lack of trust

As the United States continues to become more diverse, cultural awareness and competence are key for healthcare providers.

Finding yourself in a situation where a patient is unhappy with their treatment and asking for a refund, what should be your response? For example, you may feel that your work is satisfactory, and you are unwilling to provide a refund to the patient considering all the time you spent on their care. Or you may be seeking a quick resolution to the situation. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how to handle patient refunds.

We recently received two questions regarding electronic health records (EHR) or electronic medical records (EMR) and thought we’d share the answers in case you’ve asked yourself these questions too. Here they are:

What is the Role of Empathy in Healthcare?

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. It combines intellectual perspective with emotional understanding. Empathy is a skill that has not been historically emphasized in medical schools. However, it plays a crucial role in healthcare.