Monday, January 7, 2013

Two new posts are up.




Law school applications and enrollments are down. Could this happen at medical schools too? On Physician’s Weekly. http://is.gd/rDTAwj

News flash. Operations take longer when residents are involved. My blog on General Surgery News. Registration is required, but it’s free.  http://is.gd/Tgh9Kq

4 comments:

cynthia said...

Medical-school grads, who fail to get into a residency program, can always spend just an extra year or two in grad school getting an MBA degree. That way they'll have the necessary credentials under their belt to land a highly lucrative job in a large hospital chain or network as a top-tier administrator or a so-called "physician executive" (a term that literally makes my skin crawl.) And they can do that without experiencing any of the stress or strains of diagnosing, treating, or operating on patients. Talking about having the good life, getting something for nothing!

For reasons that totally escape me, there's a recent push in hospitals to add additional layers of management to manage physicians! This has happened to nursing, it is now starting to happen to medicine as well. Tell me, though, how is this gonna do anything but cause healthcare costs to go up even further?

We all know that administrative costs are the primary and overarching reason why health costs are spiraling out of control, and physician executives, as do nurse executives, clearly fall under the category of administrative costs -- whether they are on the provider side or the insurer side of things.

Skeptical Scalpel said...

I could not agree with you more.

Anonymous said...

FG,
I truly love this blog and follow it as often as possible. Thanks for doing this. You are a man whose words I will always listen to.
Medicine has become a business and as a business it must be managed by those who understand a P/L statement. Many physicians in my experience have a hard time with a checkbook much less a multibillion dollar healthcare delivery system. I admit, it is a very sad state of affairs. I long for the days when the physician - patient relationship was the most important aspect of the process. Today, I am lucky if my provider even knows my name.
Caring for people has become a job, not a calling. I wonder; if we were to remove the money from the equation where would we be? Who would answer the call to take care of us? I miss the surgeons cut from the Greene cloth.
I guess we will just have to do what we can as managers in this business and encourage those that we see that really get it. Thanks.

Skeptical Scalpel said...

I appreciate the comments. You are right about it being a business. And we can't go back to the good old days.

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