Malpractice Claims Down, Essential Recruiter Skills, and Pharmaceutical Pricing

A physician owned malpractice insurance company found that the frequency of malpractice claims were down between 2007 to 2014  

The physician-owned insurance company analyzed 1,180 closed claims levied against internal medicine physicians spanning 2007-2014. Among their findings:

• The majority of claims were related to diagnoses, medical treatments, and medication errors.

• Patients were involved in the top three factors contributing to patient injury.

• A majority of patient injuries occurred in either the physician office or clinic, or hospital.

• While the proportion of claims regarding cases stemming from inpatient facilities has gradually declined over the last decade, the rate of outpatient cases has increased.

• The frequency of claims against both internists and hospitalists has declined over the last decade-plus.

• The gap in the proportion of claims levied against hospitalists, versus internists, has gradually closed over the last decade; hospitalists by 2014 were responsible for more than 40% of claims.

Social-Hire wrote a piece about the 5 essential skills that recruiters must possess in order to be successful

Experienced recruiters probably won't find much useful info here, but we've all been around newbie recruiters who could use some advice about listening first and talking second...

Ability to Listen

The motto “Listen first and talk second” has been a huge pay off. Whether it is taking a job order or interviewing a prospective applicant about their next career move, it always helps if you let the other party talk first. It is best to adopt a “consultative approach” in which you determine what they want first and accordingly offer solutions. Don’t hesitate to push back if needed. Be a trusted advisor to both your client/hiring manager as well as to your candidates.

Ted Tsai, MD wrote an excellent piece about the most recent pharmaceutical industry pricing scandal

Using the recent example of the EpiPen pricing controversy, Dr. Tsai examines whether these types of controversies represent instances of price gouging, a systemic issue within the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, or all of the above.

I think that most people who don’t work in/for the pharmaceutical industry would agree that $600 for an EpiPen two-pack is excessive. How did that happen? This is America, famous for “letting the market decide,” after all. In the case of EpiPen, did the market decide? I don’t think so. A properly functioning market would have capped the price well below $600...

...the problem lies with the mechanisms of how insurance pays for prescriptions. I’m no policy expert, and I’m sure I’m oversimplifying, but it’s becoming clear to me that health insurance short-circuits the market’s mechanisms to normalize prices. If you read the fine print in both the generic epiniephrine autoinjector and EpiPen’s coupon offers, you can only use the coupons if you are commercially insured. Without insurance you are ineligible to use the EpiPen discount coupon at all and the generic coupon only would discount the generic by $100 for each purchase of a maximum of three packs (leaving the end cost for the consumer as much as $500 for each pack).