Unhappy Doctors
According to the survey, only 54% of physicians would choose medicine as a career if they had to make the decision again as opposed to 69% in the previous year. What are the underlying causes of such a precipitous drop in satisfaction? Several of the causes cited can be blamed on federal policies…
Adding to concerns related to reimbursement, physicians continue to pay incredibly expensive malpractice premiums and nearly a quarter of physicians admitted to practicing defensive medicine…
Most doctors enter medicine with the thoughts of healing patients on a daily basis, but paperwork can often come between the doctor and the patient. According to the Medscape survey, 33% of physicians spend 10 or more hours per week on administrative activities. The burden will only keep piling on come 2013 when the Physician Sunshine Act is implemented, adding 237,000 paperwork hours by forcing physicians to reveal the minutiae of their relationships with medical supply manufacturers and distributors.
More on dissatisfied physicians at American Action Forum.
Wow, this is very low. I have always been under the assumption that physicians had very high job satisfaction rates. Apprently a lot of why they get into the field isnt what they end of doing. If we want to retain passionate physicians, this should change.
Can you blame them?
This sounds horrible. What are they referring to when they say “minutiae”?
There is the possibility that patients might get turned down just for creating more paperwork for doctors.
One physician complained to me that switching to electronic records would cost him money and lower the number of patients he could see. Maybe doctors are just as lazy as the rest of us and don’t like more work. That, in and of itself, is no reason to oppose policies that create more work.
Be careful not to imply that physicians are lazy, David……you might incur the wrath of a few people posting here.
physicians continue to pay incredibly expensive malpractice premiums and nearly a quarter of physicians admitted to practicing defensive medicine…
I assume that economist would say that as a whole Doctors do not pay for malpractice insurance but that patients do. Of course those doctors with higher than average malpractice insurance premiums do pay the part above the mean but that is probably all, which makes it interesting that doctors lead the fight for malpractice reform.
It is hard to think of a worse misalignment of incentives when doctors work for politicians, as has increasingly happened in the U.S. in the last fiftly years.
Politicians think, invest, and spend (other people’s money) for short-term gain. Physicians think about a life-long commitment to their calling, go into significant student debt to gain their credentials, and are then on the receiving end of payments channelled through 3rd-party (actually 4th party) bureaucracies.
The politicians can do whatever they want to do to physicians, because the consquences will not be apparent for years to come. A fifty-year old doctor can hardly drop his stethoscope and decide to become an airline pilot or software engineer as an alternative.
As a physician I would be very interested to know how to pass my increased costs onto the patients. How exactly do I do that when all my contracts with insurers are take it or leave it propositions? Now, if I was one of those giant health care organizations that health care policy wonks seem to favor, then I might be able to stick it to ’em.
And please let me know which profession it is that likes working more for less pay? If you can point me to at least one, then I’ll admit that I’m lazy.