The health care lexicon, like our everyday language, is constantly in flux. This column is devoted to keeping you current on new health care terms.
Clinic without Walls
A group practice that operates from multiple sites. Member practices are usually economically linked and share a common administration.
Independent Practice Association (IPA)
A legal entity that holds managed care contracts. The IPA contracts with physicians to provide care on a fee-for-service or capitation basis. IPAs are often sponsored by medical societies to help physicians in solo practice contract for managed care.
These definitions are reprinted with permission from the glossary of Revolution: The New Health Care Takes Shape, authored by noted health care futurist Russell C. Coile, Jr., and published by Whittle Direct Books, 1993.
Many relevant diagnostic signs are not performed deliberately by the examiner or by the patient at the examiner’s direction. They are observed as the patient reacts to their condition. Fortin’s finger sign, Minor’s sign, and Vanzetti’s sign are three examples of this principle.
Spearheaded by burgeoning scientific and clinical research literature, psychedelics have reached a level of media coverage and popular interest that has not been seen for over half a century. By “psychedelics,” we are referring to the unique class of substances that includes psilocybin (the active compound found in so-called “magic mushrooms”), LSD, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), ayahuasca, 5-MeO-DMT, and mescaline – each of which occurs in the natural world (except for LSD, which is a semi-synthetic compound).
While working at the Lovelace Medical Center in Albuquerque, N.M., one of the primary care physicians stated that imaging every patient prior to receiving chiropractic was not medically necessary. It was at that point I reconsidered the need for the imaging of every patient to avoid malpractice.
