For better or worse, medical practices are experiencing change. While many physicians are looking to expand their practice, other physicians are seeking a divorce from their current group.
The genome project sequenced all three billion base pairs of human DNA, revealing the instructions cells need to build all the proteins in the body. But that was just a warm-up, according to Thomas C. Spelsberg, PhD, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
Diana C. Ponsky, MD, assistant professor of otolaryngology-facial plastic and reconstructive surgery at Case Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio, went to medical school wanting to be a pediatrician. She happened upon otolaryngology “by accident, by scrubbing into a very fascinating cancer case. I was hooked,” she now recalls.
It’s a fact: An increasing number of American women are entering medicine. In the U.S. today, half of matriculating medical students, and 28 percent of all practicing physicians, are women.
In the more than ten years that Paul Levine, MD, FACS, has served as chair of otolaryngology and head and neck surgery at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, he has heard his share of complaints about high-powered surgeons who are difficult to work with.
Beyond the handful of long-established and well-integrated sites being labeled as de facto accountable care organizations (ACOs), advocates are seizing the moment and pushing for a bold vision of what role ACOs will play in the movement to reform the health care payment system across the country.
Ever since the first fully equipped otolaryngology team was sent to the Air Force Theater Hospital (AFTH) in Balad, Iraq in 2004, an otolaryngologist-head and neck surgeon has become a permanent member of any deployed multispecialty head and neck team, working alongside a neurosurgeon, ophthalmologist and oral and maxillofacial surgeon.
Stroke, muscular dystrophy, Parkinson’s disease, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), head and neck cancer, Zenker’s diverticulum—each of these disparate conditions can cause dysphagia.
For many patients with chronic rhinosinusitis, functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS) has provided much needed relief from a condition that, by its daily aggravation, can significantly reduce quality of life.