Month: March 2015

March Madness

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When March Madness gets to be too much–when too many commentators impair your watching and too much swagger overshadows the coaching–turn off your television. Head outside with your first grader. Bring a basketball. Find a goal. You’ll absorb more life lessons in twenty minutes shooting baskets with your son than you’ll get in the next twenty years at your job. Give it a try. A few buckets. You won’t regret it.

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The Nonsense Alphabet Begins With P-Q-R-S

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It has become perhaps the silliest four letters in healthcare: PQRS. It stands for Physician Quality Reporting System. It’s another this and another that created by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). After you read this, you’ll be like me, scratching your head trying to understand why anyone thinks our healthcare system is better under CMS’s leadership.

CMS has setup a thing called PQRS, so physicians across the country can submit data informing the government how well they are practicing medicine. I wish that I could ease your understanding of this acronym by just referring to it as “quality data,” but it no more represents quality than a coin flip. In fact, statistically, a coin flip is probably better. PQRS is like the fisherman explaining to the rancher the type of fish that he caught. Actually, it’s nothing like that. It’s more like the fisherman’s boat explaining to the rancher’s cow the very same thing. Basically, the rancher sums it up: “Ain’t nobody have a clue what’s really going on here.”

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