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You are aware that the best doctors are among the lowest paid right now? Our best and brightest docs are working in academia, and they don't do it to get rich.
No but they want a decent lifestyle and to be able to pay back student debt.
My doctor and her husband immigrated from Canada because (according to her) they couldn't make a decent living in Canada. They felt that they had invested a lot to get their degrees and deserved something for that. IMO there's nothing wrong with that and I'm glad they made that choice because they are both excellent doctors.
Given 75% of us are overweight/ obese and ignore " doctor's orders to lose weight, exercise and take some responsibility for ourselves, I suspect it's challenging for many MDs to care more about their patients than the patients do themselves.
Your post reminds me of my Ob/ Gyn who at peak was delivering about 1000 babies a year. Her practice adjoined the hospital and she spent most nights in the hospital. When a patient arrived for an appointment, her staff put the patient's medical records in a container on the outside door of each exam room. As the pregnancy rolled on, her patter became obvious. She would spend a minute or so outside the door reviewing each patient's file before bursting into the exam room with a boisterous " hello 32 weeks".
Not sure she knew my name. Instead, she focused on what was important, number of weeks, the exam and comparing my experiences and condition to what was normal at a given point of gestation. She was/ is a highly competent Md.
She eventually closed her private practice and joined a large practice that took care of her malpractice premium and allowed her to for the first time in her career to have a semblance of a life outside of medicine.
She has no regrets.
She probably still does not know my name despite being her patient for decades.
My OB knew exactly what my name was. He always maintained a private practice. He even offered to do a house visit at no charge when I was having a problem after my daughter was born. His last name is Yeni-Komshian. I still go to him. He wasn't born here but he is the best.
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Location: Great Britain
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Originally Posted by EDnurse
Exceptional student my foot. You are easily beguiled. What show did you watch or listen that compelled you to write this post?
The " most exceptional " physician would be ONE.
Now please tell me how ONE, or ONE thousand, or ONE hundred thousand physicians are going to see and treat 300 MILLION patients. Maybe your math is better than mine. Please tell me.
Roughly one-fourth (that's 1/4 or 25%) of the physicians in this country come from third world countries. Do you prefer those "exceptional students"? Do you even know what a standard of care is?
What is it that you like the most about them? Is it their accents, their wonderful attitude, their bedside manner? Is it the way they call the nurse to remove your sock because they don't want to touch you?
There is a chronic, deliberate shortage of physicians in this country that is hindering access to providers AND is driving healthcare costs through the roof.
Posts like yours only mislead and confuse already clueless people.
It's little wonder that the US has so few doctors, as the system is both time consuming and expensive.
If many British Doctors wanted to practice in the US they would have to go back to Medical School and get a Medical Doctorate, as the course in the UK is only Five years (four for gradates) with no pre-med degree needed and which leads to a basic Bachelor Degree in Medicine and Surgery, then you get Junior Doctor Status and start being payed.
Throughout your paid career you may want to do further research in your chosen field with competition being significant for those who wish to attain Hospital Consultant level and many now complete higher degrees in research such as a Doctorate of Medicine (MD) or a PhD.
Whilst some Registered Nurses (who do an initial three year degree) in specialist areas such as Oncology also go on to do PhD studies, there are at least a doazen Phd Nurses as the Royal Marsden Cancer Hospital in London.
Many people do not like to document and some of them are physicians. Too bad. So sad.
Electronic Medical Records has been around since the late 60's. HMO were among the first adopters and it help reduce Malpractice insurance rate.The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ( Stimulus) pad medical practices to get with the program if they wanted to continue to continue their existing Medicaid and Medicare Reimbursement rates. This act created an entirely new industry and jobs.
Patients benefit from electronic record keeping when their records are emailed from a referring physician to a Specialist in a snap. Nothing quite like electronic, time stamped records to support a defense against a frivolous claim of Malpractice.
As far as shortages go, it more of a specialty and regional challenge. Most Mds prefer to specialize in the more lucrative specialties.
The Federal Government pays teaching hospitals $100,000 /year/per resident for salary and 3-7 years training. Of course, the American Hospital Association , the trade association lobby for most hospitals, says it's not nearly enough and hospitals often have to pay out f their own pockets to make up the shortfall. Too bad. So sad.
Anticipating a surplus of physicians, Medical Schools stopped growing in the 80's. They are now on track to increase graduation rate by 30% but all this does is displaces foreign graduates instead of increasing the number of doctors.
There were no EHRs in the 1960s. It was the 1990s before they started coming online.
EHRs have turned out to be an insane boondoggle. They often cannot communicate with each other and they consume vast amounts of physician time, turning the doctor into a data entry clerk or forcing him to hire a "scribe" to do it for him. Millions of dollars have been wasted on non-functional systems as they are scrapped, only to move to another non-functional system. Much of that money is our tax dollars, paid as "incentives" to adopt EHRs.
Yeah, the act created an entirely new industry and jobs. How does that reduce the cost of providing health care?
As far as malpractice is concerned, EHRs make it very easy to "document" things that were never done. The record - paper or electronic - is only as good as the data entered into it.
Many times the doctor is so busy with the demands of the EHR that he barely looks at the patient during the office visit. It does not improve patient care or improve physician efficiency.
Electronic records may be better than a handwritten note for legibility, but they are not better than a dictated one, which is what many docs did before EHRs.
The government pays part of the costs of teaching residents. The hospital is expected to pay part of resident salaries because the residents work for the hospital. I wonder at the $100,000 figure you give, though, since residents get paid about $50,000.
Graduating new doctors from medical school does no good if there are no residencies available for them. That number is controlled by Congress.
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