Malpractice premiums, decreasing payment, and tough hours makes obstetrics extremely unattractive to today’s lifestyle-focused physicians.
Related posts:
- Laborists, and how rising malpractice premiums and the physician payment system are fueling the rise of hospital-only obstetricians
- The patient dropping lottery
- "I’m still hoping I can stay in business"
- If physician salaries were lowered, would people still want to become doctors?
- Dropping Medicare patients
- Primary care doctors dropping insurance
- Dropping Medicare
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There may be a crisis of quality in the future, but not of quantity. There will always be enough so-called medical practitioners from Mukumbura, Zimbabwe or Outer Mongolia desperate enough to get to the U.S. that they will buy themselves a medical diploma (current price in Luanda, Angola is US$ 50) and agree to practice obstetrics in Jerkwater, USA for as long as it takes to get citizenship.
You should have taken better care of your own obstetricians while you had them. Now they are going the way of the thylacine, and there’s no coming back.
It was no surprise when the family physicians began to drop their OB privileges for similar reasons. When I first started seeing the community OB/GYN’s switch to GYN only practice was when I started to understand the gravity of the situation. And why not? GYN surgical procedures pay more, are less risk, and can be scheduled nicely. Who is going to pick up the slack here though? FP’s are already pushed out. Midwives? Nurse PhD’s? Maybe ER docs!
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