Working and Travel

Today is a busy day for me. It started off with a medical staff meeting which I got up early for. Made arrangements for Cord to get to daycare with Brian and still managed to walk in to the meeting as the meeting wrapped up. Apparently the head doc starts early and runs a quick meeting. BOY that made me feel stupid. Plus I had walked all over the hospital to find the meeting cause the memo that I got just said meeting - not where. Now I have gone on to being late to the office and now have snuck in a few minutes to blog about the stupidity of being late.

I had a difficult patient this am - the patient is going to have to change every thing about themselves and wanted a quick fix to do this. So many patients that I see are in a medical problem due to social behaviors and want an easy way out. As I had to tell this patient there is not one. When we indulge in bad behaviors we pay the price. Oh well, enough day job preaching...

Brian was out late last night working to get the farm ready for our trip to Tulsa. He was breeding cows at 9pm. He had them all synchronized and that is when they were ready. today he has to get all the hay out and feed set up for my father in law and get two girls set up for a long weekend with my in laws. Given my day job he gets to do a lot of the getting the kids ready duties. On a positive note, Cordell is flying with us this time.

The only major other issue facing me right now is whether or not Congress will fix the SGR. This is the very flawed formula on which physician payment is based. If there is no fix reached by March 1rst physicians will face a 21% pay cut in Medicare patients, this is unacceptable. This would force most doctors to stop treating medicare patients and since medicare rates are often used to set private insurance rates... See the problem. With that kind of cut in pay our office in our small town will no longer be able to practice with the current patient mix. Already two of my partners have stopped taking new Tenncare patients and I fear these SGR problems may force our practice into more budget decisions. So please, feel free to call your Congressman and let them know that you want physician payments from Medicare fixed at an appropriate level for 2010... if we can bail out banks we can save Medicare for our Seniors.

Oh well, now back to work till later then home to pack and ready to Fly to Tulsa in AM - Off for YF&R leadership ...