Cheryl Clark

This is a sidebar to a story on combined MD and DO state medical boards. For the main story, click here.If DOs fear they’d be robbed of their autonomy and philosophy and suffer unfairly at the hands of MD-dominated boards, much of it stems from what happened more than 60 years ago in California, which still maintains separate DO and MD licensing boards.DOs practicing in that state, who then were 10% of physicians, grew increasingly miffed that members of the American Medical Association and othe…

West Virginia effort hits late obstacle; some DOs fear bias under a combined board

At 10:30 a.m. on Monday, May 13, the healthcare teams at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego started cheering and clapping. Their longest length-of-stay patient ever was finally being discharged.For more than 3 years -- 1,193 days to be exact -- the patient had been confined to an acute care bed despite the fact that for 948 days, or 80% of that time, he had no medical need to be there. He was what hospitals call an avoidable bed day patient, or an ABD, Melody Thomas, RN, Scripps Mercy Hospi…

Report shows which of 23 specialty groups and primary care practices earned more in 2023

A few years ago, plastic surgeon Edmond Cabbabe, MD, was preparing for a follow-up cosmetic procedure on his wife. Mercy Hospital South, a major hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, had put her on the operating room schedule, just as it had done when he operated on her before.But on the day of surgery, Cabbabe said, the hospital called him and cancelled her procedure. Administrators told him the hospital’s new policy would not allow physicians to operate on family members, he said.He tried other hos…

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