Clearly whoever said Twitter and Facebook were only for the young whippersnappers is out of touch with the real world. Everyone uses social media, and doctors are taking to it at an increasingly rapid pace, according to a study released by QuantiaMD in early September.

Nearly 90% of physicians use at least one social media site for personal use, while over 65% use them for professional purposes, the study says.

One of your biggest opportunities for new revenue in 2011 and beyond is Medicare’s new annual wellness visit (AWV). One of the biggest obstacles to billing the AWV quickly and efficiently has been finding the right form for the visit, which is unlike a regular physical. Now some vendors are catching on and offering ways to cut physician time by digitizing the new encounter form needed to bill the AWV under Medicare guidelines.

Medicare Recovery Audit Contractors (RACs) are now in good company since HHS finalized a rule Sept. 14 establishing the Medicaid RAC program Building on the Medicare Recovery Audit Contractor program. The program, effective Jan. 1, 2012, vows to save CMS $2.1 billion in fraudulent funding over the next five years, nearly half of which will be returned directly to the States.

You would win big-time if you’re a primary care practice, but lose big-time if you’re a specialist, under a new proposal by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC). The group has a budget-neutral, “paid-for” solution that repeals the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula once and for all, saving all physicians from the annual cliffhanger Medicare pay cut that Congress always steps in to prevent.

President Obama said he is willing to make cuts to Medicare but only if there are tax hikes for the super wealthy and will veto any bill that slashes entitlements and fails to raise taxes, he announced in his deficit reduction speech Sept. 19 from the White House’s Rose Garden.

The speech was an effort to lay the framework for the recently established super-committee in charge of trimming over a trillion dollars from the federal deficit in the next decade who began talks in early September.

“Either we ask seniors to pay more for Medicare, or we ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share in taxes; we can’t do both,” Obama said.