Docs Get Paid for a Fraction of What They Do
Family doctors are paid mainly for each visit by patients to their offices, typically about $70 a visit. In the practice in Philadelphia covered by the study, each full-time doctor had an average of 18 patient visits a day.
But each doctor also made 24 telephone calls a day to patients, specialists and others. And every day, each doctor wrote 12 drug prescriptions, read 20 laboratory reports, examined 14 consultation reports from specialists, reviewed 11 X-ray and other imaging reports, and wrote and sent 17 e-mail messages interpreting test results, consulting with other doctors or advising patients.
Full article on the uncompensated work burden on family doctors.
And the govenment wants to pay them even less. Go figure.
John, as you have pointed out many time, the problem here is that doctors are paid by task. That means some tsaks are compensated; some are not; and doctors have no ability to repackage and reprice their services.
You can add another (uncompensated) task to the list of things your family physician does. Experts would like your family physician to provide a “medical home” that coordinates all the care you receive from your other doctors (i.e. specialists), many of which earn nearly double the income of your primary care provider, according to a new article in Health Affairs.
Is this perhaps a result of a push by the medical field to specialize? I’m wondering if we’ve begun to think of family physicians as not qualified compared to specialists.
I agree with Tom. That’s the essence of the problem.