Physicians should switch to a billable hours system. Lawyers are now breaking the $1,000 per hour mark, while physicians are taking it hard with an impending 10% Medicare fee cut next year.
Here’s what a trial lawyer says about breaking the $1K per hour barrier:
“Frankly, it’s a little hard to think about anyone who doesn’t save lives being worth this much money,” says David Boies, one of the nation’s best-known trial lawyers, at the Armonk, N.Y., office of Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP.
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to anonymous 12:01 am
Was the $20,000 cost of your surgery from the doctor’s bill alone? And if so, was it for cosmetic surgery? (which by the way is not covered by health insurance companies so you are going to be paying out of pocket) The total costs of surgery also includes hospital equipment costs, nursing costs, laboratory costs, etc.
Guys:
You are wasting your time with the anon (AKA CJD) who states “just stop taking private insurance/medicare/medicaid”. He doesn’t understand the business side of medicine and the virtual monopoly controlled by the “big three”. What he uses as examples are the few conceirge docs/elective procedure specialists that can do this. We in the biz know that accounts for a small minority of all patients. For what he suggests to work for most docs (not all CJD) would be a total change in the payer system from third party to direct from the patient with the third party going to the pt not the doc. Maybe not a bad idea, but in the real world this will never ever happen. From what I can tell, CJD appears to be some governmental beurocrat and entirely too much time on his hands during the work day.
You’re right. I’m an idiot with no concept of business. You guys should continue doing EXACTLY what you’re doing, entering into the same contracts that make you unhappy now, and things will change.
That’s how the world works. If only I’d seen it.
“The fact that you doubt it is only evidence that that practice is successful, not that it doesn’t exist. You’d be amazed how many lawyers can bill more than 48 hours in the weekend before hours are due…”
I’m amazed that someone who knows so much about illegal billing practices hasn’t turned more people into the bar.
“I’m amazed that someone who knows so much about illegal billing practices hasn’t turned more people into the bar.”
Yeah, that would work. It would be easier to hold back a river with my hands. Oh, and that small matter of finding a new job.
I could report a lawyer or two, but I’d never get the chance again and these lawyers are still doing their cases right, so their billing may be questionable–but that’s it, its “questionable,” plenty of room for the Bar to let them of the hook and sell me down the river.
That’s quite the high horse you are looking down on me from.
Thanks for making my point CJD
“Thanks for making my point CJD”
Who are you talking to Annon 7:11? If you wish to refer to another post you need to quote from it or cite the authors name or Anon posting time. Plus, you assume that it is obvious what earlier point you made that you seem to think Annon 12:34 made for you. It isn’t.
Bravo Anon 8:58 for the intelligence work. We need you at the NSA; who knows maybe we would have Bin Laden by now.
on reading this blog and its comments i cant possibly think where our profession as a doctor is heading. people come to us at a time wen they are at their lowest for not only treatment but also they trust their lives in our hands. i do think the situation currently in doctor patient relation is due to our measuring of our help in monetary gain. if i just wanted money i would have taken up any other profession as you rightly said even plumber earns more than us. i think in order to be a good doctor it is necessary to be a good human being and not just delve in money.
you may think wat does an intern know about the life of a practioner, well i think if you try to help the patient irrespective of their paying capability and see the joy on the faces of the people you heal you will see the difference. this is wat my teachers and my patients have taught me.
Here’s a Novel Idea.
Legalaid and Legalcare based on the same rate structure Medicaid and Medicare Doctors receive.
For all Americans not just seniors.
Few can afford the cost of legal counsel.
Dale DeLong
Houston, TX
I’d love to be one of those lawyers who charges $1000/hr. Not many can do that. The standard billable hour rate for attorneys is more like $250-$300. Economically, physicians as a whole fare far better than most lawyers. A lawyer can expect to make about $55,000/year the first five years out of law school. Those that make more than that have no life, and they still don’t make as much as doctors.
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