Frank Sinatra purportedly said of Rosemary Clooney that she was able to hit a note right in its center.


Frank Sinatra purportedly said of Rosemary Clooney that she was able to hit a note right in its center.

Harold (Rick) Pillsbury, MD, President-Elect of the Triological Society, has been predicting for 10 years that there would be a need to hire people to help extend otolaryngology practices—in other words, physician assistants (PAs) and nurse practitioners (NPs). “I was right. That makes me the soothsayer here,” he joked.

How much stock should otolaryngologists put into the parental interpretations of their child’s complaints? According to Ellen M. Friedman, MD, an otolaryngologist in Houston, parental descriptions are an important part of patient histories, but you still need to perform objective measures.

When the team of otolaryngologists from Children’s Hospital in Boston, including Drs. David Roberson and Rahul Shah, among others, investigated the classification of errors and physician responses to errors as it is germane to otolaryngology, they provided a great service to their fellow specialists.

As otolaryngologists are performing more procedures on an in-office basis, more are also using conscious sedation in the clinic setting.

Pharmaceutical company representatives (PCRs) are as ubiquitous in otolaryngologists’ offices as seasonal allergies and ear infections.

Standards proposed by the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) for the compounding of sterile medication could be applied to vial mixing in the office.

An estimated 31 million Americans are affected by some level of hearing loss and, as the population ages, that number will continue to rise.

Payers are convinced that compensating physicians and hospitals for meeting quality targets, also known as “pay for performance” (P4P), is an important step in bridging the quality chasm identified by the Institute of Medicine in 1999.