Please Add to the List
Lucy Hornstein, MD, wrote this nice piece called “How To Kill a Doctor“. It is obviously not all-inclusive. Let’s help her out by adding some other ingredients to the recipe. Please read the article and then leave a comment here so we may add to the list.
Nice article. Very depressing. Each and every item has been experienced by all of us primary care physicians in our careers. Yes, every one. There is a playbook that the Medical Industrial Complex uses to degrade us and devalue us. Administrators all go to the same seminars and learn the same tactics (I almost said Gestapo tactics but that is too extreme). I was driven out of Family Medicine after 20 years in the trenches. Hospital administrators, quality initiatives, lack of control (over simple things like my work schedule, support staff), generalized devaluation and system wide replacement of Family physicians by mid levels pushed me to the brink. Much happier now, but not in Family Med any longer. The system did effectively kill me off. Happy Doctor’s Day!!!
Worse than that even, will be the amount of control third parties will have over the way you practice medicine.
You might as well spend less time and money becoming a PA or Nurse Practitioner.
And do not forget to add in your contract for new young physicians:
– gag clauses, so they will think twice before reporting you to the Feds.
– broad non compete clauses, so they will have to move to another country if they decide to leave your practice.
– better if they are FMGs on temporary visas. That way the possibility of staying in the country will be contingent of working for you at minimum rates for 3-4 years.
– include language that anything on the contract, including their salaries, may change “from time to time”.
– include punitive clauses with monetary payments for unspecified “damages” or leaving the practice.
Other helpful actions:
– have one of your “friends” to invite the young doctor out and offer them alcohol. A witness on alleged chemical dependence is always helpful in court.
– staple his or her vehicle tires. Works wonders if the clinic is in a rural area and now they have to drive several miles back to town.
– have them to see all your “pain clinic patients”. Their DEA number will come up first on the next drug bust in town.
-demand that they see all your patients at least monthly for wathever reason.
-Schedule patients every 10 minutes, so they’ll have enough time to squiz the “walk ins” in between.
– have them to be responsible for patients in your clinic, nursing home, hospital emergency room and hospital wards, all at once. Works wonders when the office is 20 or more miles away from the hospital.
– keep in mind all their important dates, (birthdays, anniversaries etc.), so you can schedule them to be on call during those.
-have your office clerk to instruct patients calling with emergent conditions to come to the office first to see your “new provider”.
-Offer your colleagues in the community your new provider services to cover their offices when they go on vacation. For a good lump sum of course (for you).
You have to get em early, before they are even conceived.
There is a new PCP (Physician Control Pill). It’s called medical school tuition.
I just heard that tuition at Jefferson Medical School has reached about $100,000 per year.
So let’s run some numbers.
Average four year college debt of about $100k.
Now add $400k of debt to that.
So a medical school graduate otherwise known as doctor, unless you prefer to call them “provider”, may have a hefty mortgage from their education. Then they get to start a 3+ year residency where they don’t earn much but it doesn’t matter because they barely have time to spend anything anyhow.
If a med student is lucky and has family resources for his education, it can cost up to $60k a year for private 4 year undergraduate degree + the 400k for med school. So that puts us wphere in total?
How about $640k not including general living expenses over this 8 years.
So my thanks go out to our wonderful politicians who have created a system so convoluted, that it is almost impossible to afford to become a physician, doctor, or provider these days, dependent upon your definition.
So if you want an easy was to kill a physician, just show them the costs.