Yesterday I was diagnosed with a stress fracture in my fourth metatarsal head just two months away from the NYC Marathon!!!!

I wanted to get some ideas for training with this injury.  Ideally once the boot is off in a month, I can pick-up training close to where I left off and still run the NYC Marathon in November.

I read an article about Deep Water Running; this makes me wonder ‘would I be able to maintain my current level of fitness by running in the water?’. Does anyone have a deep-water-marathon training program?

AdamBanks

Andrew Pollack discovers what the latest research says about how age and strength interact. Unfortunately, the two relate inversely. But, fortunately, hope is rising on the horizon. Scientists are on the trail, after the scent, and have just to name, compartmentalize, and implicate causes. For the rest, follow this thread.

JonathanJezequel

Gina Kolata provides summary of a “kind of science court“, whose proceedings happened last spring. The exercise gathered various and unbiased medical scientists and asked them to evaluate the effectiveness of any Alzheimer’s intervention. They concluded that there is not a treatment works. Really? What do readers think? Please opine.

JonathanJezequel

Join our new Facebook Fan Page.  Connect with fellow PT Project fans around the world.

AdamBanks

Tags: Facebook

PT Project contributor Allison Lind was in the news recently as one of her patient’s long and miraculous road to recovery was retold.  She helped her fellow triathlete recover and return to the sport after a horrific accident that was supposed to leave him unable to participate in the grueling event forever.  To read the story click here.  Congrats to Allison for doing such a great job!

RyanOrser

Tags: Contributor, Injury, News, Triathlon

A few days ago, I was watching an interview on ‘Mad Money’ with the CEO of Salesforce.com, Marc Benioff.  Mr. Benioff was introducing Salesforce’s new social medium platform for businesses, Chatter – just like Facebook for business. 

This idea of using a “Facebook” type of application for a small company is brilliant, it’s a great way to communicate with all employees, or specific employee groups, and even more brilliant as a way for management to get information that they might not necessarily see.  Using a social networking site will all for instant collaboration, give a real time “snap shot” of the company, and allow management to gain valuable insight.

Today, NY SportsMed is launching Yammer, similar software to Salesforce’s Chatter, but free.  Yammer sells upgraded Silver and Gold packages for a few dollars per user. Yammer is set up just like Facebook, but it is a closed group to just people with company email addresses.  (I am reluctant to endorse products here, but this one is very cool and free).

Some of the features that I look forward to using:

Profiles – employees can share important information on their profiles

Status Updates – Share insight or a tip of the day, front-of-the-house staff and back-of-the-house staff can collaborate.

Groups – work groups can share information and work together across different locations

Document Handling – we can post important documents, such as the employee manual so people know where to go to find it.

App updates– employees (and managers) can get updates via sms or an iPhone app.

NY SportsMed will be testing Yammer our today, I will keep you posted.

AdamBanks

I am taking my co-op billing idea to the next step; I am going to propose some real world numbers!

The below budget is based on NYC prices; rent, salary’s and electricity are significantly more expensive in this town than the rest of the US – I am sure some of you will laugh at these numbers.  If we use these higher numbers for assumptions, certainly there will be room to reduce expenses in the future.

For simple assumptions, I have added an additional biller for each 3 practices and divided the expenses equally by practice.  In reality a practice would have to “pay for what they use”.  A small practice may actually use only a portion of 1 biller – a small practice could get all of the benefits of a large billing company for a portion of 1 salary and overhead.  A large practice would pay a larger portion of several billers and a larger portion of the overhead.

It would be easy to see that a smaller practice could get the full services of the cooperative for less than $2,000 per month.

AdamBanks

I am so sick of wasting so much money on collecting from insurance companies.  Each and every practice is wasting its profits on “back-of-the house” operations.  NY SportsMed runs a large “in-house” billing department – this is a very expensive operation – but I have found it better (most likely not cheaper though) than out-sourcing. 

To do billing in-house NY SportsMed spends 10’s of thousands of dollars to keep up on the ever changing environment of billing.  We bring in billing consultants quarterly.  Our company is lucky in that we can afford this investment; most small practices (and small billing companies) could never make this investment. We are very good at billing, but we spend so much money to be good at it (right now our billing department is 6 full time employees – all located in Manhattan on the most expensive square footage in the country).

Our company is not only waste money on billing, we all waste money on other information that we could share, like calls to our attorneys.  It drives me crazy to think that we are paying our attorney $300 per hour to answer a question and the practice down the street is paying their attorney $300 an hour to get the same answer to the same question.

I propose the creation of a billing “cooperative”.  I don’t feel that there is “competition” among our practices, why don’t we agree to share back-of-the-house resources? 

The basic idea of the billing co-operative is that we will create a billing company that we all can own (member-owned and operated, an alternative to commercial profit-orientated medical billing company).  As members, we will work together to build the most efficient and knowledgeable and ethical billing company.  Only members may use the resources, we will share in the expenses based on actual use / actual expenses.

By combining resources we will eliminate duplicity of billing departments, and eliminate the third-party-for-profit billing companies.  Members will share information on a real-time basis to help all member companies become more profitable.

I propose the following principles:

1st Principle: Voluntary and Open Membership

The Billing cooperative would be a voluntary organizations, open to all physical therapists willing to accept the responsibilities of membership, to use the services of stated co-op.

2nd Principle: Democratic Member Control

The billing cooperative will be a democratic organization controlled by their members, who actively participate in setting their policies and making decisions. Elected representatives are accountable to the membership.

 3rd Principle: Member Economic Participation

Members contribute equitably to, and democratically control, the capital of their cooperative. At least part of that capital is usually the common property of the cooperative. Members usually receive limited compensation, if any, on capital subscribed as a condition of membership. Members allocate surpluses for any or all of the following purposes: developing their cooperative, possibly by setting up reserves, part of which at least would be indivisible; benefiting members in proportion to their transactions with the cooperative; and supporting other activities approved by the membership.

 4th Principle: Autonomy and Independence

The billing cooperative would be an autonomous, self-help organization, controlled by the members. If the co-op were to enter to agreements with other organizations, including governments, or raise capital from external sources, it would do so on terms that ensure democratic control by their members and maintain the co-operative autonomy.

5th Principle: Education, Training and Information

The billing co-op will provide education and training for their members, elected representatives, managers, and employees so they can contribute effectively to the development of the billing co-operative.  Members will share billing related information to other member’s of the co-op, individuals working in the co-op will be educated to provide the highest level of service to the members.

6^th Principle: Level of Service

The billing cooperative will provide a higher level of service to members by sharing information among practices.  Billing standards will be increased; practices revenues will increase as all practices will share in real-time information.  

Let’s start the conversation, email me if you are interested: abanks@nysportsmed.com

AdamBanks

Deciding to have surgery is always a big decision; especially when your injury is more of an annoyance than painful.  The Chicago Tribune posted an article about the 4 things everyone should consider before “going under.”

To read the article, click here.

RyanOrser

Tags: surgery

The NY Times published an article yesterday about a new genetic screening method for children with mild scoliosis.  The test requires only a saliva swab which looks for 2 genetic markers found in people with moderate to severe scoliosis.  This could be exciting news for children and adolescents that previously would have been recommended bracing or surgery.  Founders of the new genetic testing suggest that it will not only spare unnecessary bracing of children whose mild scoliosis will never progress, but will also spare the already burdened medical system by decreasing number of check-up visits and x-rays performed on the children.  To read the entire article click here.

RyanOrser

1. Barefoot Running: Separating Facts From Myth
2. “Tennis Leg” – Not Just a Country Club Injury
3. The New Frontier
4. Arthrofibrosis Guidelines
5. Fatigue from cycling…is it in your head?