Impeding changes to our Health Care system

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Aren't most of the specialists you know OB-GYNs? As you note, their malpractice insurance rates are exhorbitant, and far worse than the rest of the industry. I've said before that needs to be curbed.

Yes and Surgeons of all practices. So General Surgery, Plastics, EENT, Vascular, and Ortho.

Why do they need a staff of 30? Is it possible that many, if not most of those employees are hired specifically to deal with chasing down payment from bullshit insurance companies?

I would say that maybe 5 or so work just with insurance, coding, and billing.

Wouldn't certain reforms allow them to have a smaller staff and lower operating costs?

I seriously doubt it.

And I'm sorry to tell you, but 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM are not excruciating hours. My husband works from about 8:30 AM until 7:30 PM, and usually comes home with more work to do. And his industry does the on-call thing, too, so he's in that rotation as well. Ask Lumberjim what kind of hours he worked this weekend.

Those are just the office hours times for the patients. No one goes home or comes in at those times. When I go there, the surgery side we start at 0700 and often do not finish til after 5. Remember they still have to see patients in the hospital after clinic is finished.

My experience is that most private-practice doctors (again, other than OB-GYNs) do not go on call--they have an answering service that will leave a message for an on call nurse, who will call you back to let you know whether your problem can wait until morning, or you should go to the ER.

All surgeons have an on-call service, basically an answering service. They also pay a nurse or PA to be the person on-call for professional stuff over the phone. And one of the 4 is always on-call in-house at the hospital 24/7/356. All of them work the day after call in the clinic, some for just a half a day, one works more. Add up those hours and it would put most peoples work schedule to shame. As a side I work an average of 70 hours a week and often well over 110 hours. The guys I work with will take vacation 2 or 3 times a year for a week at a time, but hey they also work for it. I still say few people would be able to keep up with the average busy doctors work schedule.