The primary care shortage will only worsen. Are insurers listening?
“The reason there’s a real threat of a shortage of primary care physicians is that they are paid much less than other physicians,” says Ann S. O’Malley MD, MPH, a senior researcher the Center for Studying Health System Change. “Their incomes are lower than surgeons and other specialists, and a lot of what primary care physicians do is not compensated. The time they spend coordinating care on the phone, talking to social workers, and talking to specialists about care provided to the same patient just does not get compensated.“So between their lower baseline salary and the way our reimbursement system works, it’s a much less attractive field for medical students to choose.”
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Oh no, the cat’s out of the bag!
They’ve discovered that we specialists get paid for coordinating care, talking to social workers and talking to PCP’s on the phone.
Dang!
What we should do is hand over the PC duties to NPs and PAs (who can do it at much lower cost) and have the MDs all become specialists.
You do realize, of course, that the reaction from the suits will be to lower the salaries of specialists to obtain parity…
Especially the suits in Democrat garb
Let me be the devil’s advocate. Spell it out for me.
If primary care disappeared. FP’s and general internists. Everybody went into a specialty, so the total number of docs was the same.
What bad thing do you think would happen?
I have my own opinions, and it’s not the null hypothesis, but I’d like to hear other opinions.
I’ll tell you what I would be doing as a pulmonologist. I would NOT be doing primary care.
What this country needs is a good healthcare meltdown.
Over 50% of all doctors in the USA are primary care. If you handed all primary care jobs over to NPs and PAs, that means half of all doctors would instantly be out of work.
The problem is the lack of freedom to set prices in a free market.
The government and insurers will never, I repeat NEVER, raise rates for PCPs. So stop all the embarassing whining.
The only hope for PCPs and patients alike is to opt out of the masochistic reimbursement madness with creative new free market financial arrangements.
>>The only hope for PCPs and patients alike is to opt out of the masochistic reimbursement madness with creative new free market financial arrangements.
That’s kinda what I was getting to, with my question about the value of primary care, if PCP’s suddenly disappeared and all that.
I suspect they may prove their value, indeed outside first-dollar insurance schemes. HSA’s and all that. Where the patient might find value in seeing the doc who can take care of the hypertension and do the skin biopsy for cancer, or take care of the back pain, etc.
Or…..go to the cardiology NP and the dermatology NP and the orthopedic NP…..and pay consult fees each time.
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