Rebecca Artz
At the AANS Annual Business Meeting held on May 2, 2016, in Chicago, seven proposed Bylaws Amendments were presented to the Voting Membership. On June 15, Voting Members of AANS were sent ballots and asked to vote on the approval of each Amendment. We are pleased to report that all Amendment issues were approved with between 83 percent and...
"Nihilism stands at the door. Whence comes this uncanniest of guests?" -Friedrich Neitzsche, c. 1885Some of my most vivid memories from residency involve the evaluation of neurotrauma patients in the emergency department. As a...
TBI) is the leading cause of death and disability in Americans under age 35 and the leading cause of premature death and disability worldwide (1). In 2009 alone, 2.4 million patients presented to an emergency department (ED) with a TBI and an additional 52,695 died from their injury (2). Currently, at least 5.3 million U.S. residents live with long-term...
Some of you may fondly remember the mid-80s TV show “St. Elsewhere,” probably the first program to show the gritty underbelly of residency training with any semblance of realism. One of the main characters was Dr. Mark Craig, a tough but fair (are there any others?) cardiac surgeon, played by William Daniels. In one episode, he proclaims “It is...
Voting members of the AANS are invited to submit nominations for the 2017 Humanitarian Award by Oct. 15, 2016. The award will be presented at the 85th AANS Annual Scientific Meeting, to be held April 22-26, 2017, in Los Angeles. The Humanitarian Award honors an AANS member whose activities outside of medicine bring great benefit to society. Nominees can be living...
In 1708, the East India Company merged with its competitor to maintain a monopoly in trade. Since then, mergers and acquisitions have primarily served industry in maintaining its competitive advantage and profits. Today, medicine is undergoing a radical transformation through aggressive mergers and acquisitions; the result is super-sized health care delivery systems. 2015 was dubbed the year of “merger...
In an era of consolidation, physicians can often feel lost in the shuffle. Multi-million dollar deals occur every day, but many times, those providing the care are the last to know of significant changes impacting its delivery. There are various vehicles for affiliation in the modern health care market, including mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, joint operating agreements and clinical...
"Understanding Value-Based Healthcare." Christopher Moriates, MD; Vineet Arora, MD; Neel Shah, MD. McGraw-Hill Education. New York. 2015. Get ready for the switch from volume to value! This book is the best-to-date at defining the problems that make this change necessary while pointing at solutions. We all know the present unsustainable situation: We spend more than $3 trillion per...
"Do Not Go Gently..."
-Dylan Thomas With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010 came a new model for reimbursing physicians, which is predicated upon networks of physicians and hospitals working together to share responsibility for providing care to Medicare patients in ways that would curtail spending while improving the quality of patient care and the patient’s...
Like most neurosurgeons, I have experienced thrill and exhilaration when my healing efforts succeeded and desolation when they failed. I give equal time to both. In spite of much progress in diagnostic tools and surgical technology, neurosurgery is still a very personal human endeavor. We are vested with a unique responsibility the moment we take a scalpel in our...
