Recently we interviewed Charlie Lefevre, who was recently appointed President & CEO of Princeton Insurance Company.

Jay Hedden, Esq., is executive director of NJ Physicians. He has previously served as director of public affairs at the Medical Society of New Jersey, special assistant to the president of UMDNJ, as well as the executive director of boards and councils at the NJ Department of Health and Senior Services.

The Senate voted Wednesday to reverse a Medicare pay cut to doctors that some New Jersey advocates had worried would force senior citizens to scramble to find treatment.

Doctors in New Jersey remain reluctant to bring electronic medical record systems into their offices, despite the federal government championing the technology and laws that let hospitals subsidize some of the cost. Such systems consist of hardware and software with capabilities that include tracking laboratory test results, maintaining patient histories and detecting harmful drug interactions.

The middle-age woman walked into the emergency room complaining of headache, numbness, slurred speech and difficulty moving her left side.

Immediately thinking stroke, staff members at University Medical Center at Princeton quickly ordered a CT scan.

Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly using Web-based content through customer-service portals to build their brands with physicians, according to results of a survey published in April by Manhattan Research, LLC, a health care market research and services firm in New York City.

Congratulations for shedding light on step therapy, the health insurance practice of requiring patients to try and fail with older, cheaper drugs before the company will pay for the medications their doctors want for them ("Doctors say insurers step over the line," May 4). Sticking with the "tried and true" therapies of yesteryear is not a prescription for medical progress. Unfortunately, it is more and more the mindset of health insurance companies that dic tates the care patients receive.

 Every customer of the health insurance companies doing business in New Jersey has a horror story about denials of coverage, the inability to speak to a cooperative service person on the phone, skyrocketing premiums coupled with decreased services and increased deductibles and the total lack of accountability by insurers...

For years, Lloyd Negoescu took prescription Lopressor to keep his blood pressure stable. Then his Medicare Part D plan changed, and his new insurance carrier, RxAmerica, would no longer pay for the brand-name drug...

An organization of New Jersey doctors launched to challenge the Medical Society of New Jersey met for its first "leadership summit" this month and heard from state legislators and health-care officials.

PHYSICIANS IN NEW JERSEY continue to close ranks against managed-care providers and insurance companies, accusing them of increasingly interfering with patient-care decisions to cut costs.

HAMILTON, NJ -- At the organization's first annual Healthcare Leadership Summit, Senate President and former Governor Richard Codey urged members of NJ Physicians to get more involved in the political process.

TRENTON, NJ (March 20, 2008) --  Members of NJ Physicians are now eligible to participate in a Vaccine Buying Alliance to access substantial savings on vaccine products.

NJ Physicians, a statewide organization for medical doctors, is distressed that Aetna will no longer cover the cost of anesthesia during colonoscopies ("MDs fight insurer plan on cancer screenings," Feb. 13).

TRENTON, NJ -- NJ Physicians (www.njphysicians.com), a statewide organization for medical doctors, is challenging two insurance companies over new managed care edicts that, if enacted, may delay life-saving tests for patients with heart disease, and deter patients from getting screened for colon cancer.

"Governor Corzine must decide whether to sign a bill allowing close relatives to sue for monetary damages as compensation for grief, or whether the bill would have unintended -- and potentially dire -- consequences on our state's already beleaguered healthcare system.

TRENTON, NJ -- Battered by the high costs of medical malpractice premiums, the ever-present threat of lawsuits and an increase in jury awards against healthcare professionals, New Jersey doctors are turning to an unlikely ally - lawyers.

Many New Jerseyans might have to wait to get heart tests under new rules from the state's largest health insurer.

-- NJ Physicians, an association of the state's medical doctors, applauded Governor Jon Corzine today for not signing the Wrongful Death Bill -- legislation which would have had potentially dire consequences on the state's already beleaguered healthcare system.

Practicing medicine these days is enough to make a doctor sick. Four years ago, an estimated 70 percent of the state’s 34,000 licensed doctors staged a one-week protest, postponing routine checkups and rescheduling elective surgeries, to voice outrage over soaring malpractice premiums. A Monmouth University/New Jersey Monthly poll this year found that 32 percent of physicians in the Garden State have seriously considered moving to another state, and half have genuinely contemplated retiring early.

TRENTON, NJ -- Leaders of the medical community today announced the formation of a new, statewide physicians' association to address increasing concerns that the quality of medical care in New Jersey, and the future of the practice of medicine, are in jeopardy.