Strategies for Coding, Billing and Getting Paid Appropriately - Third Edition

CAFP is proud to announce it has produced the third edition of the popular "Strategies for Coding, Billing and Getting Paid Appropriately" monograph to assist family physicians with an essential component of your day‐to‐day existence: coding and billing for the services you provide. Coding appropriately and accurately is essential regardless of practice setting or size. We hope you will find this to be a useful overview and an updated set of guidelines for use in your practice.

FRACTURED: Family Medicine's Fix to Ensure a Health California
A dramatic increase in the number of uninsured. Huge disparities in health status. Dwindling access to care. An impending shortage of primary care physicians that threatens to leave the most vulnerable unprotected. In combination, these trends are bringing California's fractured health care system to a breaking point.

Medical Jargon and Clear Communications
Health literacy has been defined by the Partnership for Clear Health Communication as "the ability to read, understand, and act upon health information." While health literacy continues to receive significant attention these days, it is important to recognize that oral communication between doctors and patients can greatly contribute to a patient’s understanding of health information. Presented by Molina HealthCare and California Academy of Family Physicians.

Diagnosing and Treating Medical Errors
Much has been written about medical errors since late 1999 when the Institute of Medicine published its watershed report, To Err is Human: Building a Better Health System. The well-publicized results of this study faulted America's health system for causing between 44,000 and 98,000 error-related deaths annually and called for improvements in the reporting and handling of medical errors.

Making the Most of Physician-Patient Email
Email is an important communications technology that about 30% of family physicians are using currently. It is a commonly accepted form of communication, and patients are increasingly expecting to have email access to their physicians.

FPs and Inpatient Care in the Era of Hospitalists
As market based health care reform progresses in the United States, family physicians are affected in new ways. One significant evolution is the use of inpatient admitting teams, commonly referred to as “hospitalists,” to care for hospitalized patients. The use of hospitalists is by no means a new phenomenon.

Family Physicians: The Logical Resource for our Evolving Health Care System
California’s health care system has undergone tremendous change. Rising health care costs during the ’70s and ’80s concerned public and private health care purchasers alike, and led to the emergence of a variety of practices known collectively as managed care.