samboct
Posts: 1817
Joined: 1/17/2007
Status: offline
|
"Actually the study recently done on how medical administration is done at the Mayo clinic disproves this. In a hospital that a Doctor has a financial interest in, there are significantly more tests run than in hospitals where the doctors only receive a salary. Now some of those doctors that are ordering tests to boost their income, may say it is to prevent litigation, but studies show otherwise. If you want the link just use the search function for a topic started by me about health care costs."
I looked for that link- I got an ABC news story.
Furthermore- the Mayo model proves only that salesmanship works. Nor is the Mayo model applicable to the greater problem of health care.
Following reasons:
1) Medical centers of excellence offer wonderful care to the people who can get there. Lots of the population can't.
2) Docs at the Mayo clinic are good targets for salespeople flogging expensive toys. Docs in the middle of North Dakota are not. Think that the business model of a doc in North Dakota might be a little different than at the Mayo clinic?
3) All docs are terrified of lawsuits. I've done enough primary data gathering- i.e. asking questions of enough docs to feel pretty confident on this one. One way to avoid discussing a topic is to make sure that there isn't good data. Who would collect the data on the medical profession as a whole- who would write the check for the study? Hasn't been done, so we're forced to extrapolate from smaller groups to the profession as a whole.
"Again see above. Not to mention that it is the insurance companies that often force an out of court settlement, rather than spend the money to fight unsubstantiated claims."
It costs the insurance company six figures to crack a file on a malpractice case. Their odds of success are very high- over 90% due to skilled lawyers and generally, the facts support the actions of the doc. The insurance is still expensive- docs still get turned down for coverage even though the case has proved that they did nothing wrong due to the likelihood of getting sued again, and the doc has lost between 3 months to a year out of his/her practice in dealing with the lawsuit.
At Hartford Hospital in CT- all the orthopedic surgeons on staff have either got a lawsuit pending, or have had one in the past 10 years. This is a well respected hospital with good docs. I don't know of a business that can function with that kind of legal bill. Bear in mind that when the doc is tied up with the lawsuit, he/she is not seeing patients and they have their office overhead eating them up. Hence, when somebody comes up with some statistics that show that the overall cost of malpractice insurance is low- I know that its nonsense since major metropolitan areas have non-viable crucial medical practices.
"But the reverse extreme, the position you are offering is also nonsense. Much of the objections and support I have been seeing is nonsense from both sides. Tort reform will assist a little in lowering costs, but until State Medical Boards start actually enforcing some of their regulations and laws, the only punishment many Doctors can suffer is a loss of money. Fix both sides of that, and then you have a viable solution. The reduction in costs is low on the priority list of things that can be addressed to lower costs though. ROI needs to be applied when addressing such a huge issue."
We've got some agreement here. From a historical perspective, I think the problem arose when the AMA insisted that only docs were competent to judge the actions of other docs. Consequently, even cases of gross negligence such as sawing off the wrong limb, operating while drunk, leaving scalpels inside a patient, did not result in loss of a license- and they should have. So I agree that tort reform can't happen in a vacuum, but if we make the docs license less of a sinecure, I suspect that the "need" for malpractice lawyers will evaporate. You should not be able to sue and win for a lousy medical outcome- that comes with the territory, but gross negligence should result in the loss or suspension of the medical license.
"You mean, they want to cover their ass because they know that they are exposing their patients to the risk of an undiagnosed diseases. Got it. Personally, I call that cutting corners."
I don't- I call figuring out what tests are medically reasonable: good medicine. Docs should not be ordering tests to cover the possibility of something with less than a double digit chance of occurring. If every doc practiced medicine as in the TV show House- medical costs for the country would be orders of magnitude higher than they are now. Luckily, most of us don't have such complex ailments.
Put it into dollars and cents when it comes out of your own pocket.
Want the doc to run every test under the sun when you have a sniffle? OK- you pay for it. Me, I'd rather not. I suspect that if you had to pay for all those tests that your doc runs directly, you might have a change of heart.
Sam
|
RE: What the hell just happened? - 
Profile
perfectly put! 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread