delawareonline ¦ The News Journal, Wilmington, Del. ¦ Patient increase, limited medical school slots make seeing doctor tougher to do:
"Some doctors say the problem lies not with a doctor shortage, but with an uneven distribution of MDs. New doctors gravitate toward more lucrative specialties, such as sports medicine. Specialties that require surgery, such as ophthalmology, also attract doctors because Medicare and insurers reimburse surgical procedures at a far higher rate than evaluations. Cooper said young doctors are turning to these profitable specialties at the expense of Medicare patients, who largely suffer from diabetes and arthritis and are in need of endocrinologists and rheumatologists. Medical school students also may be dissuaded from primary care. Dr. David Krasner, who works at Family Practice Associates in Wilmington, said the existing reimbursement system pays too little for cognitive evaluations by primary care physicians. 'For physicians to go into primary care in this day and age, it's akin to committing financial suicide,' he said. 'The shortage in my opinion won't get better until Medicare changes the way it reimburses.'"
Please click on some of the tags below: physician income, in particular to learn more about this topic...
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
delawareonline ¦ The News Journal, Wilmington, Del. ¦ Patient increase, limited medical school slots make seeing doctor tougher to do
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2 comments:
Economics are a big part but also there is a psychological component to it too. Doctors (not unlike other professionals), either by training or nature, like to see a problem and fix it with some degre of certainty and permanence. Surgeries lend themselves to that while chronic diseases don't. Primary care has a mix of both. It's great to have a lot of smart patients who take respnsibility for their health and great to help kids in pediatrics, but tiresome to have patients who don't do their part in addressing their own illnesses, and treating geriatrics can be depressing as well.
Also we can't just charge hundreds of thousands of dollars to med students and keep them in school or training for years and then complain that it is their fault they seek higher paying specialities. If we're going to overhaul the system, we ought to figure out a way to a) start medical school earlier and b) have the system pick up the cost of those who provide the preferred services.
Regarding the first paragraph, I agree, but, clearly erasing the large disparities would go a long way to fixing this.
Regarding med school ebt, I agree also. In the UK, one gets a BS in Mediine straight out of their high school equivalnet. And of course their tuition is next to nothing. These two things erase one of the big problems with physicians' specialty choice: the need to economically "catch up" to our peers who started accumulating assets right out of college (and not continuing to accumulate massive debt!) and are way ahead of us by the time we are 35 or 40 or 50.
Cheers,
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