WSJ Health Blog: “Certainly, any doc (or anyone else, for that matter) who is not getting paid by the hour is likely to do some uncompensated work. But the issue does seem pretty compelling in the case of primary care docs, who work in a payment system that tends to favor procedure-oriented specialties.”
Related posts:
- Listen to MedPac
- The value of physicians’ time
- Is general surgery the primary care of specialties?
- Make primary care more appealing
- Disband the RUC
- Stuart Sutton: Supplementing the primary care income
- Sicko: Leading us backwards?
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{ 7 comments }
When I was paid by the hour in a private clinic, I was paid for 8 hours a and usually put in 10 for the same reason. It just isn’t the work ethic in medicine to punch a clock. Just like ward nurse we stay past our paid shift until the paper and phone work is done.
It went way down though when I began charging 20$ each for RX refills.
Surgeons charge a much higher fee that is understood to cover all of the care incidental to the surgery. Now that primary care involves so much outside of the face to face work, there needs to be a change in how they charge to accomodate that or availability or qualtiy or both will ( I think has already) suffer.
Pretty much everyone who works thinks about quitting on occasion.
The difference is that physicians actually make enough money to retire way early, apparently.
It’s hard for the rest of us to take the complaints about underpayment seriously when the physician is threatening to retire at 50.
the physician who retires at age 50 has only 15-20 yrs of earning, with such a long & expensive training period. The cop who retires at age 50 makes nearly as much as a primary care doctor, with little or no loans, and a hefty pension, courtesy of the taxpayers.
ahh 06:37 the comments from the clueless peanut gallery. The fact is for every doc talking about retiring at 50 Usually a procedure oriented or ROAD specialty (look it up). There is a doc (usually primary care though given the debt level often not) who is SILLY PAYING OF THEIR MEDICAL SCHOLL LOANS. At least get a clue about what you are criticising.
I’m a family doc. I’ll be lucky to be able to afford retirement at 75 the way things are now. If I “retire” at 50, it’ll be because the net pay per hour for primary care has dropped so low that I’m better off quitting medicine and taking up plumbing or some other better paying job.
That retire way early stuff is BS. I am nearly 50 and have only been able to save towards retirement for 15 years. Yeah, I guess I could if I wanted to live under the bridge.
Doctors more often work way past usual retirement age. Some because they are havng fun. Most because they can’t afford to retire. I work with several in that spot.
I remember when I was a resident hearing a guy on the elevator laughing because the guy he went to high school with was still in his residency, he had just spoken to him in the hallway, while the speaker was scheduled to retire from the fire department in just 6 years.
I am now 5 years away from the age in which my father retired in his civil service job, and am probably not even half way through my career–and he left work after an 8 hour day and never worked a weekend in his life. He got more vacation time every year than I have taken in the last 3 years. Yep, and he said I should become a doctor because docs have it made, don’t go to the office until 10 and leave at 4 and only work 4 1/2 days a week.
It is funny if you think about it.
One thing I figured out a long time ago–if I want understanding from the general public, I am going to be disappointed. People have no idea and aren’t interested in learning. I do what I think I ought to be doing and turn a deaf ear to whether others think it is fair, reasonable, or whatever.
If you come in late to the office because you started rounds at 6 am but still didn’t finish, people think you snagged an early short round of golf or layed about and read the paper. I’ve had patients assume the Mercedes in the parking lot was mine, instead of the ten year old pickup (the Mercedes was another patient’s) without bother to correct them. I ignore the reverse snobbery comments from people who grew up with far more than me.
I don’t resent folks like the second anon guy, I just walk around them and go on doing what I have to do. And I make sure he pays me in full at the time of service because that is the only compensation that I will get–certainly not appreciation for having given over my youth to learn this art or my ethical commitment to be there for him once his is on my patient list.
The few Docs who “retire” at 50 are quitting to work in another line of work. That is only called retirement in medicine. For everyone else it is a career change.
Just like cutting back to less than 45 hours a week is “slowing down” or “part-time”.
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