Panda Bear: “Just one successful lawsuit against a physician for a missed diagnosis can damage his ability to maintain his credentials, cost him the average income of any two or three Americans in increased liability insurance, jeopardize his financial assets, and even end his career. Why risk our own money when we can use somebody else’s to protect us, even if it costs millions?”
"There is very little incentive for most physicians to control costs"
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Exactly. Physicians should not be in the business of containing costs, it is not your job to do this. You are not an insurer, you are not the patient’s pocketbook. Keeping yourself in the black is an issue, but it is not your job to contain costs nor should it be.
Your concerns should, in fact, be elsewhere…keeping abreast of medical issues, keeping skills and ethics honed, using the appropriate standard of care in diagnosis and treatment of illness. Where cost saving measures matter, your job is to guide a patient in the array of choices and fully inform about what cost saving does or doesn’t mean in terms of patient outcome.
I don’t know where physicians got the idea that they are supposed to sacrifice the few for the sake of the herd, except that third parties to the doctor patient relationship have importuned them to be a gatekeeper of cost.
Great. So no more complaints then when a third party payer such as an insurance company or the tax payers via their selected officials put some cost controlling measures in place. Right…
Hey crim,
OK–so long as they are the ones who pay the judgement when they deny the recommended medication or treatment and there is a bad outcome. And so long as I have the right to contract with them or not.
Jimmy
Criminallopath,
I wouldn’t complain if the insurance companies or tax payers would take over the liability of a patient not getting a necessary CT scan.
You only get liability protection once the general market is protected from your colleagues that involve themselves in the litigation market with post hoc ergo propter hoc claims of causation. As far as forced participation goes… I am against it. Scrap medicare and its horrific state level spawns. Give the money back to the tax payers.