When designing healthcare spaces to foster wellness, you should first understand the particular patient illness being served and then determine that population’s fundamental needs. “Providers who serve patients with rheumatoid conditions should identify the range of clinical presentations specific to their patient population,” advises Sharon E. Woodworth, AIA, ACHA, EDAC, Healthcare Practice Leader, Perkins+Will Architects,…
Editor’s note: This is the second installment of a two-part series showing how a busy office-based practice can incorporate patient advocacy into its standard workflow. In Part 1, we looked at the reasons for incorporating patient advocacy into your practice and offered an outline for implementing it. Part 2 amplifies the concepts explored in Part…
Telling a patient that he or she has been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), ankylosing spondylitis, fibromyalgia or another debilitating, painful and/or chronic condition can be upsetting for a patient to hear and difficult for a rheumatologist to convey. Given this, it’s important to prepare for the appointment. “Take a few minutes beforehand to contemplate…
I found your recent article, “To Terminate or Not to Terminate?” (The Rheumatologist, April 2015), very relevant to my practice. The hospital system I practice in, Summa Health, Akron, Ohio, has two rheumatology groups with active hospital privileges. My partner and I are both part-time female rheumatologists who work for a hospital group, Summa Physicians…
Full implementation of ICD-10 will go live on Oct. 1, 2015, and congressional leaders have confirmed there will be no further delays. The transition to ICD-10 is not just a simple update; it is a major revamping of diagnosis coding. With the complexity of coding using the ICD-10 system and the high risk of disruptions…
CHICAGO—Stem cell transplantation for systemic sclerosis patients has come a long way over the past decade, with more finely calibrated dosing and better patient selection, said George Georges, MD, associate member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and associate professor in the medical oncology division at the University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle,…
CHICAGO—David Daikh, MD, PhD, professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco and chief of the Rheumatology Division at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, said the overlap between malignant disease and rheumatic disease means rheumatologists should stay aware that more may be going on than just a rheumatic disorder. He made his…
CHICAGO—A 49-year-old woman has had RA for eight years. She has a rheumatoid factor reading of 35, an aCCP reading of 160, erythrocyte sedimentation rate of 42, plus erosions. She has been on methotrexate. She tried etanercept for six months, but then it stopped working. She was on 40 mg of adalimumab weekly, but it…
There can be a rhythm to rheumatology. At least that’s what Alain Alvarez, MD, can sometimes find. Listening, assessing, helping. It can be a successful dance when doctor and patient become partners, hoping to lead each other forward. When you consider this, it might be little surprise that Dr. Alvarez is also a dance teacher….
Arthritis Center Renamed to Honor Ephraim P. Engleman, MD Ephraim P. Engleman, MD, has been on the faculty at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) since 1947, 10 years after he received his MD from Columbia University. The 104-year-old rheumatologist is currently the director of the Rosalind Russell/Ephraim P. Engleman Rheumatology Research Center, which…