A physician is freed from the chains of primary care. And you wonder why medical students aren’t interested?
No more primary care. No more forms to fill out for workers comp, disability, SSI, student loan forgiveness, longer-term-care insurance coverage, FMLA, or temporary suspension of billing for credit card or mortgage or rental furniture payments owing to customer illness.No more forms for nebulizers, commodes, handrails, oxygen, home health nurses, adult diapers, wheelchairs, cock-up splints, lift chairs, physical therapy, or the dreaded power wheelchair/scooter doctoral dissertation.
No more forms to attest that someone can enter a nursing home, play soccer, work out at a gym, be in an assisted living facility, do chair exercise at the senior center, train to become a medical assistant, wrestle, teach school, or that he or she is, above all else, free from communicable diseases.
Related posts:
- Margaritaville, or not doing primary care
- No primary care: "Will you sign my forms?"
- Value of primary care
- My take: Dwindling primary care, spinal care, ratting out patients
- Primary care woes in Canada
- From primary care physician to truck driver
- Why primary care matters
KevinMD.com on Facebook
{ 4 comments }
No more whining.
You simply have to be tough-skinned enough to require payment for those who want to have you fill out their paperwork on your professional time and using your professional credentials. You might not like the paperwork, but when someone pays you for signing off as a licensed doctor with whatever responsibilities and liabilities go with that, then it is clear to everyone that what you are doing is a service that has value. You don’t go to your accountant with your TurboTax 1040 and expect him to sign off on what you are submitting without a fee. Why should anyone expect you to do differently? Demand a fee. Collect up front. No exceptions.
Great point. You go into the lawyers office to fill some form out and they charge $500/hr and pawn it off to their paralegal.
Thank god – after 13 years of GP practice , I am going back to a surgical residency – when they asked me whether I could manage the stress , I resisted the urge to laugh maniacally!
PS my wife is a lawyer and where I get 50 F*^&^cken bucks for a 10 page insurance form , she gets 250 for a 1 page pro forma letter with her stamp on it!
A surgical residency?!! Are you insane?!! Like Bill Clinton said, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!”
Comments on this entry are closed.