"About half of the nation's primary care doctors expressed concern about quality-of-care metrics commonly used by accountable care organizations, according to the 2015 National Survey of Primary Care Providers released last week by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Commonwealth Fund.

In that survey, almost half of all primary care physicians surveyed (47% of them) also said that recent trends in health care are leading them to consider an earlier retirement.

According to KFF officials, the survey reflects a continuing 20-year pattern of physician dissatisfaction with market trends in health care.

That dissatisfaction extends to quality metrics and the financial penalties for not meeting those metrics. Roughly 50% of surveyed physicians said those provider performance metrics have a negative effect on patient care. About 22% said the practice would have a positive effect on patient care."

Read more at California Healthline

"Traditionally, medical students haven't been taught how to talk with their patients about the costs of treatments and medications. The thinking was that doctors should offer their best advice to all patients, regardless of their insurance or ability to pay.

But in a huge departure from the past, the vast majority of the country's medical schools now integrate discussions of cost, value and effectiveness into their curricula.

It's "a dramatic change," says Dr. Janis Orlowski, chief health care officer for the Association of American Medical Colleges,  which helps medical schools develop curricula."

Find more at KPCC

"It’s one of the grand ideas that is supposed to revolutionize U.S. health care: reward doctors who keep patients well with fewer tests, procedures, and appointments.

That might register as barely profound to most of us, but it is a radical shift in the incentives that doctors and hospitals face. Under the Affordable Care Act, some doctor’s groups and hospitals have banded together in accountable care organizations to treat Medicare patients under this new philosophy. If the patient stays healthier with fewer appointments, the providers get a share of the cost savings.

But a new study published Monday in the Annals of Family Medicine examined how doctors have been making money in this brave new world vs. the status quo, and found pretty negligible differences."

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