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The darker side of being a doctor (2017)

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Re: The darker side of being a doctor (2017)

#251

Post by toldyouso2022 »

bsdz wrote: post #30

Something I've never quite understood is why, in the UK, we cap the number of medical students per year. I've known very bright people who aspired to be doctors but had their applications turned down only to go on to do phds and become scientists instead. I'd rather have twice as many doctors who work sensible hours rather than the status quo burn out. Looks like there are calls to change this. https://commonslibrary…

It's the same in the US, Italy, etc Doctors are a cartel receiving a monopoly from the State. That's all there is to it, really

Re: The darker side of being a doctor (2017)

#252

Post by nradov »

wuj wrote: post #132

One point I resonated with is the high administrative overhead of being a doctor. I can imagine the stress of using an outdated EMR system when the time you have for each patient is so limited. I see lots of AI companies are trying to transform the MedTech industry, but I'm unsure how much of their products useful / are actually adopted by the hospitals. Maybe some experts in that space can enlighten me on that? I al…

Even before AI tools started becoming available, some provider organizations hired human medical scribes (documentation assistants) to do EHR data entry so that highly paid physicians could focus on patient care.

https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/sustainability/...

AI can partially automate the scribe jobs to deliver a minor productivity boost or cost savings. But the near-term prospects for using AI to automate care delivery look pretty dim.

Re: The darker side of being a doctor (2017)

#254

Post by mcmoor »

GuB-42 wrote: post #219
lilsoso wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should enforce rigorous qualifications for doctors. We've relaxed the standards far too much already.

Sure, but no doctors is worse than lower skilled doctors as even lower skilled doctors are better than the average patient self-treatment attempt. We need doctors who are available to treat simple conditions and refer to a more qualified doctor for the complex ones. Such a job doesn't require being a genius, just people who are not complete idiots, and the qualifications required here are genius-level, not idiotproof…

I don't know, lower skilled doctors can be quite a pseudo science amplifier at worst. Sometimes it does feel like that no doctor is better lower skilled one, especially when self treatment (or more accurately, remote treatment) is getting better nowadays.

Re: The darker side of being a doctor (2017)

#255

Post by a5seo »

senortumnus wrote: post #231
peschu wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The picture you are painting is way too dark. And does not give a realistic picture. A lot of what you say is true for doctors in their first 5-10 years into their career, when employed in a hospital. This not true for doctors which reached a certain level like „oberarzt“ and above. This is especially not true for doctors with their own „office“ (business). Yeah people may cry, but normally it is very hard to bring a…

Surgeon here, in private practice. Agree with the article - all the stressors he mentions are typical of both residents and staff physicians. The hour crunch for me is better post residency but overall the stress is unchanged. Probably higher after training with the added responsibilities & risks. My sense is that the field developed in the era of independent/private practice, where the grueling hours worked was just…

I’m so glad I’m not alone in noticing this “provider” bs. Peel back the creepy Orwellian doublespeak and all you find is cynical ploy to save money by creating a false equivalence of doctors’ work with non-doctors. The health care industry is just the latest home of the money-grubbing vampire squid of finance. Sickens me.

Re: The darker side of being a doctor (2017)

#256

Post by droopyEyelids »

ayakang31415 wrote: post #249

I would like to ask anyone who knows medical policies: can we not have cap on accepted medical school matriculants each year? Can we have a system where if you are qualified to attend medical school, let as many of them attend as they can so free market mechanism plays in this career path just like we have in graduate school?

This will get you started: https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-planning-of-u-s-physician...

Re: The darker side of being a doctor (2017)

#258

Post by nradov »

anjel wrote: post #245
nradov wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not even remotely viable. There is little or no correlation between price and quality in healthcare. There are no reliable ways to accurately measure quality of individual doctors across the full spectrum of services that they deliver. In particular, it doesn't make sense to just look at outcomes because the doctors who take on more difficult cases will always look worse in the metrics regardless of the quali…

Like air transport, in America Healthcare has its First Class, Business and Steerage tiers of medical care. ACA (Obamacare)HMOs may have opened healthcare up to a lot of people who until then were going without. But its a faaaar cry from from Employer PPOs. And the ACA PPOs somewhere in between. An don't forget the Trumpcare policies, with major policy exclusions.

You appear to be mixing up a number of unrelated issues. Employers often offer both HMO and PPO plans. The differences are typically in provider networks and deductibles/co-pays/co-insurance. Employer sponsored PPO plans don't necessarily make it easier to access higher quality providers — especially because most of the metrics for measuring provider quality are unreliable or even misleading. And in practice there is very little difference in networks between most health plans; the majority of major provider organizations accept all the major plans.

If you really want "First Class" health care then you'll have to pay out of pocket for concierge medicine. That isn't directly covered by most insurance plans, although they will reimburse for certain services delivered through concierge medicine practices.

Re: The darker side of being a doctor (2017)

#259

Post by schrectacular »

derbOac wrote: post #61
user_7832 wrote: post #2

Most of the issues mentioned in the article and the included email are concerning, however they also oddly seem to be common in many places across the globe. The surgeon mentioned was in Australia, I have seen these issues first hand in the Netherlands and am aware of very similar of the first 2 out of 3 issues (caused by overwork/understaffing/over-fatigue etc) in Belgium, Germany, the UK, India and god knows how ma…

The answer is implied, right there in the first paragraph: "... I’ve never been diagnosed with a mental illness." At least in the US, there's a kind of masochistic pride in the physician community, that everything he described in his essay is laudable, noble, to be emulated. Nowhere does he acknowledge the risks to his patients or whether the costs are worth it in the end, or if a different system might be better. An…

It's different in aviation because the pilot dies too when the plane crashes.

Re: The darker side of being a doctor (2017)

#260

Post by nradov »

DonnyV wrote: post #195
nradov wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you've done the math on that. Healthcare constitutes 17% of US GDP. A huge chunk of that is paid by self-insured employers. An additional 4% income tax wouldn't be sufficient to fund a "Medicare for All" program. Any further increases in income taxes would be highly regressive for low-income people. And the baseline Medicare program doesn't even cover a lot of stuff that is typically included in private…

That 17% includes Net cost of health insurance. So that would go down a lot with the profit taken out of it. Also expenditures would go down with price regulation and the system would also generate money from licensed medicines. Also the simplified billing and administration of a single insurance system would save a ton of money. Especially since a lot of the overhead in hospitals is admin. This simplified billing wo…

You're dreaming. Commercial payer organizations have low profit margins, especially since the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) instituted an 85% minimum medical loss ratio. Some of them already operate as non-profits. Eliminating them wouldn't free up nearly enough funding to make "Medicare for All" work with a mere 4% income tax increase. Do the math.
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