1) As the manufacturing industry fades, more are finding new jobs in health care. However, this leads to a reliance on government money as Medicare and Medicaid account for a significant amount of health care revenues.
My take: This places workers at the mercy of government cutbacks.
Doctors take heed. Those who support Medicare for all or any other government-dominated payer system will also find themselves at the mercy of governmental pressures to cut spending, and subsequently physician payments.
2) Doctors specializing in geriatrics averaged less income than physicians without such specialty training.
My take: In 20 years, 1 in 5 Americans will be over the age of 65. The current climate of discouraging medical students away from geriatrics is not the way to produce more doctors to care for the elderly.
3) Nice piece in THCB about the generational “changing of the guard” in the physician workforce. One observation includes more PCPs being employed by hospitals.
My take: Hospitals are better equipped to handle the financial losses of a small medical practice. PCPs and other generalist physicians act as “loss leaders” for hospitals (like the cheap DVDs at Best Buy), where they can bring patients in for more lucrative specialist services and procedures.
Related posts:
- Geriatrics shortage
- Should geriatrics be mandatory in medical school?
- Hospital employment
- My take: Funding geriatrics, electronic records, CT-cardiac scans
- Aging
- Safety-net hospital financial woes
- The cost of "free" health care
{ 2 comments }
In regards to point number 3:
If primary care doctors “bring in” patients for specialty care, they should stop being labelled as “loss leaders”.
Quite the opposite. They should be given a “finder’s fee”!
“Doctors specializing in geriatrics averaged less income than physicians without such specialty training.”
Translation: Doctors specializing in a 100% government funded specialty averaged less income than physicians without such specialty training.
The only hope for geriatrics is for “concierge” practices outside of Medicare. I am not sure I see how to do this, or if this is even realistic.
Ed Sodaro MD
Comments on this entry are closed.