Jeffrey Siegel, MD: A rare combination of clinical scientist and regulatory collaborator
Medical Decision Making and Coding
In my years of coding for rheumatology, I am often asked this type of question: “I have a patient who recently came in for a visit. She had two or three diagnoses, was placed on three or four different medications, and we ran one or two labs on her. Does this qualify for a level-four visit?”
Coding Corner Answer
October’s Coding Answer
Let the ACR Help You Improve Your Practice
Today’s rheumatology practices face increasing internal and external pressures. Staffing effectiveness and efficiency, overhead increases, coding and billing issues, litigious employees, conflicts with colleagues, new competition, changing patient attitudes, new revenue constraints, and managed care contracting and compliance are just some of the pressures that constantly push practices to their limits.
Bridge Funding Award Keeps Researcher on the Path to Her Passion
On June 25, 2008, the American College of Rheumatology Research and Education Foundation received a letter from Sujata Sarkar, MD, one of the first recipients of the ACR REF/Arthritis Foundation Bridge Funding Award. In that letter Dr. Sarkar wrote, “I am very thankful to you … This award has come to me at a very crucial and vulnerable time in my academic career as a junior researcher.” The crucial and vulnerable time to which Dr. Sarkar refers is the time when she would need to search for alternative funding to pay for her rheumatology research career—or leave academia altogether.
I Am an Advocate
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” Cliché perhaps, but certainly fitting in describing the practice of rheumatology of late. We have been blessed with a widening array of therapies with which to treat rheumatologic illnesses. The advent of the biological era promises even greater potential for meaningful reductions in disability and death from these diseases.
Vasculitis
Vasculitis is a general term for a group of rare diseases that involve inflammation of blood vessels. There are many types of vasculitis, and the different diseases that fall under this term may vary significantly when it comes to symptoms, severity, and duration. Most forms of vasculitis are rare and affect both men and women of all ages.
Five Answers You Won’t Get From Insurance Carriers
Have you ever called a carrier and asked why something was denied? If you work in a rheumatology practice, chances are you have, and you probably hung up feeling even more confused than before you made the call.
An American in Paris
Visiting a historical city inspires reflections on the history and progress of rheumatology
A Workforce for the Future
The ACR is working hard to meet tomorrow’s needs
The Difficult Patient Interaction in Rheumatology
How to smooth tough patient encounters
Rheum to Learn
The ARHP’s new NP/PA rheumatology training program will provide a boost to the workforce
Wegener’s Granulomatosis Treatment Today
WG has an evolving prognosis and treatment course
Case Report: A Patient with Gout Develops Granulomatous Hepatitis
Case Presentation A 45-year-old man with crystal-proven gout, poorly controlled diabetes and chronic kidney disease was lost to follow-up for six years and presented back to the VA clinic in the midst of a gout flare. He stated he had continued taking 100 mg of allopurinol daily, but his serum urate level was 13.8 mg/dL….