Medicare Change to “Privileging by Proxy” Could Hurt Psychiatrists Providing Telepsychiatry
September 1st 2010The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) wants rural hospitals and critical access hospitals (CAHs) to take certain new steps to ensure that the private-office psychiatrists they connect to in big cities for telemedicine services are qualified for that purpose.
2010 Tech Survey: Do You Have an Interactive Web Site?
September 1st 2010Chances are good you finally have a Web site for your practice. That’s assuming you’re among the majority of physicians - 65 percent, according to our latest Technology Survey. But is your Web site much more than a page or two listing your practice location and contact information? Probably not. And should it be more? Certainly.
Rape, Psychiatry, and Constitutional Rights-Hard Cases Make For Very Bad Law
September 1st 2010The most disturbing turbulence at the boundary between psychiatry and the law is the misuse of a makeshift psychiatric diagnosis to justify the involuntary, indefinite psychiatric commitment of rapists. This is a disguised form of preventive detention and an abuse of psychiatry.
Trapped Under the Earth: How Will the Chilean Miners Fare?
September 1st 2010There are very real concerns about the miners’ mental well-being. Chile’s Health Minister reported that five of the men were not eating properly and refused to be filmed. In the meantime, a team of nutritionists and psychologists have been assembled to monitor their physical and mental states.
If I Am Not For Myself: The Trials and the Triumphs of the Transgendered
September 1st 2010Just imagine. If you are not a transgender individual, what must it feel like to always think, as far back as you may remember, that you should have the body of the opposite gender? That you were “born in the wrong body”.
Trendspotter: Technology Must Prove Its Value
August 25th 2010The challenge of new technology - as in the example of robot-assisted surgery - is that costly innovations often become the standard of care before there’s sufficient evidence to tell whether they add real value that justifies their expense.
The Meaning of Addiction: DSM-5 Gives the Lie to Addiction as a Chronic Brain Disease
August 25th 2010Although Charles O’Brien, MD, who heads the substance-related disorders work group, is a vigorous proponent of the notion of addiction as a disease, nothing about the proposed DSM-5 substance-related disorders section supports the idea that the syndrome is best understood as a chronic brain disease.