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Volume 15 • Issue 9 • $5.00 March 2019
THE REGION’S MONTHLY NEWSPAPER FOR HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS & PHYSICIANS

PHYSICIAN REAL ESTATE PHYSICIAN
UPDATE UPDATE
Baby Boomers Fuel Need for More

Medical Facilities in South Florida

BY B. ALAN WHITSON

This article is comprised of trends to be covered at the
South Florida Hospital, Outpatient Facilities and Medical
Office Buildings Summit on March 6 in Miami.

The Silver Tsunami is reshaping healthcare. Dem -
ographic trends are causing Florida to face the nation’s
largest increase in the volume of patient visits a year.
South Florida accounts for 30% of state’s patient visits.
This is fueling the demand for more medical facilities in
the South Florida region.
From 2017 to 2045, South Florida’s population will
Dr. Andrew Ta B. Alan Whitson Oyinkansola Ogunrinde
grow 23% from 6.8 to 8.6 million based on projections
from University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and
Physician Business Research. As a result, doctor visits will rise 43% from 22.9 to 32.6 million visits MACRA –
a year. Aging Baby Boomers account for 76% of the added volume. The impact isn’t just
Burnout in the doctor’s office – medical laboratories, ambulatory surgery centers, emergency Is Your Medical
rooms, and hospitals feel the pressure too.
The effect isn’t uniform across South Florida. Broward and Miami-Dade counties
Increasing as account for 70% of the growth; eight out of ten patient visits is by someone 65 and over. Practice Poised
Palm Beach County adds another 20% to the region’s total; those over 65 make up 46%
Demands on of visits. In Monroe County, a 19% increase in visits by those 65 and over offsets a 5% for Success?
decline in visits by those 18 to 64. In every county in South Florida, those over 65 com-
Doctors Grow prise the largest share of visits. The Medicare Access and CHIP
Continued on page 34 Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) is a
bipartisan legislation signed into law on
BY VANESSA ORR
April 16, 2015. Administered by Centers
Working as a physician has its share of Part 1 Global Med Device Investigation for Medicare and Medicaid Services
challenges. And with more responsibili- (CMS), this law created the Quality
ties being added to the job every day, it’s Highlights Importance of Managing Payment Program (QPP) that: repeals the
not surprising that more and more doc- Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula,
tors are suffering from burnout. In fact, Risk Alongside Innovation changes the way that Medicare rewards cli-
according to the Medscape National nicians for value over volume and stream-
Physician Burnout and Depression lines multiple quality programs - Physician
Report 2018, of 15,000 physicians sur- BY VENSON WALLIN, CPA Quality Reporting System (PQRS),
veyed, 42 percent reported burnout, with Meaningful Use (MU), and the Value
the highest rates being seen among The health and life sciences ecosystems are converg- Modifier (VM) programs. It also required
intensivists, neurologists, family physi- ing to become consumer-centric thanks in large part to the removal of Social Security Numbers
cians, ob/gyn and internal medicine. the infiltration of technology. Take the Open Artificial (SSNs) from all Medicare cards by April
“Burnout is not a South Florida issue Pancreas System project (OpenAPS) as an example. 2019.
or a Broward issue—it’s a national prob- After a large network of consumers around the world
lem that the AMA and other grew tired of waiting on developers to get an arti- The Bottom Line
organizations are looking ficial pancreas approved through traditional About 30% of medical practices’ panels
at quite closely,” said regulatory routes, OpenAPS decided to take are Medicare patients according to the
Broward Health’s matters into its own hands and create a AMA 2016 Physician Practice Benchmark
Chief Medical Officer Salute to guide for building one themselves using Survey. Given an increasing healthcare
Andrew Ta, M.D. technology. market share of baby boomers, the ever
“There are so many Venson Wallin shrinking reimbursements, and a seeming-
more demands on Physicians In response to changing demands of ly irreversible healthcare embrace of value
physicians today tech-empowered consumers, industry regulators have in recent years based and pay-for-performance programs,
taken the much-needed action of updating approval frameworks in the
from dealing with See pages 14-31 name of patient care innovation. the mandated QPP has considerable
practice management But as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)’s impact on the viability and sustainability
issues to monitoring of medical practices and providers.
recently published ‘Implant Files’ series on the medical device industry
Continued on page 12 Continued on page 40 Continued on page 6
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