There's been a move towards this for about 5-7 years now. With the ACA coming online, it's picked up steam. Most providers/ins utions are of the opinion that Medicare reimbursement will fall on the order of 10-15%. With rates being as marginal as they are already, that's enough to send most practices off the precipice even at a 66/33 split.
Seems low on the whole. The demographic that the practice sees matters here though. I know that Mayo Clinic sees just over 50% Medicare and they are circling the wagons when it comes to their capital improvement budgets. All departments are being asked to slice 5% off their budgets, and that's for starters. There are some notable exceptions to this rule though, the opening of two large capital projects in AZ and MN being the biggest. Here too though, a new demographic (peds) is being considered as potential new clientele. Johns Hopkins is taking similar measures. All of this is to say that our nations most prominent ins utions recognize the uncertainty that the future holds, just as individual providers do.
Most of them at any rate.....
What struck me as I read it was that he couldn't make the money he wanted to make with his practice, but he had no problem selling it, suggesting that someone figured they could make money at it.
My cardiologist told me last time I was in that medicine is only about money and business anymore, and he is thinking of leaving for that reason. Had nothing to do with ACA, just hated all the business aspects of medicine.
Medicare - Govt insurance. Australia - Govt healthcare.
Privicare fail.
Even docs who give up independent practice to join groups of doctors, clinics, hospitals to save overheads are still seen by mgmt as nothing but sources of revenue, with pressures to produce revenue above all else.
google "doctors leave quit medicine", plenty of stories and hits.
5 years ago:
Half of primary-care doctors in survey would leave medicine
Nearly half the respondents in a survey of U.S. primary care physicians said that they would seriously consider getting out of the medical business within the next three years if they had an alternative.
Experts say if many physicians stop practicing, it could be devastating to the health care industry.
The survey, released this week by the Physicians' Foundation, which promotes better doctor-patient relationships, sought to find the reasons for an identified exodus among family doctors and internists, widely known as the backbone of the health industry.
A U.S. shortage of 35,000 to 40,000 primary care physicians by 2025 was predicted at last week's American Medical Association annual meeting.
In the survey, the foundation sent questionnaires to more than 150,000 doctors nationwide.
Of the 12,000 respondents, 49 percent said they'd consider leaving medicine. Many said they are overwhelmed with their practices, not because they have too many patients, but because there's too much red tape generated from insurance companies and government agencies.
And if that many physicians stopped practicing, that could be devastating to the health care industry.
"We couldn't survive that," says Dr. Walker Ray, vice president of the Physicians Foundation. "We are only producing in this country a thousand to two thousand primary doctors to replace them. Medical students are not choosing primary care."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/11/18...iref=allsearch
Just another symptom of how dysfunctional and diseased the for-profit US health system is.
For-profit health care is $3T national pulblic health disaster. But corporations pay politicians enough to screw up reform like ACA and keep true reform not even broached.
u know what they wanna do down here now is put public hospitals especially management into private hands run by corporations instead of doctors running the hospitals....
These physicians claim they are overrun by all the red tape, but if they would spend the money on a qualified office manager, they would not even have to handle a lot of that stuff. I helped open a solo private practice, and the main thing I emphasized was paying other people to do what they specialize in, and let the doctor be the doctor. There was an attorney who handled the lease negotiations, a CPA who set up the financials, and a systems guy who set up all the computer stuff. In the long run, it is worth it to pay those people.
Cool story.
Good article TB.
For the record Pueblo isn't very rural. It is however filled with illegals and Cali transplants.
This doc did not give upon healthcare in America. Instead, he's offered a solution:
South Portland doctor stops accepting insurance, posts prices online
http://bangordailynews.com/2013/05/2...prices-online/
super cool, distributes his very high overhead of fighting with insurance orgs onto his patients so he can cut staff and prices, snatches back control of his practice of medicine from insurance orgs.
It also increases admin overhead for the insurance orgs since they will have to handle directly 100s of his inexperienced patients' claims rather than his single experienced office, which could cause the insurance orgs, if 1000s of docs did this, to increase their prices to cover their additional admin overhead.
He's a true bomb throwing anarchist, I LOVE THIS GUY. I hope the medical and general press follows his experiment.
I saw that.
Interesting experiment. I hope it works out.
There is an almost indescribable amount of waste and greed in our health care system. Reminds me of the inkeeper from Les Miserables.
The administrative overhead and insurance profits make our system the most expensive in the world for any given treatment.
The first comment under that article about the Maine doctor brings up a good point. If too many other docs start doing this, insurance companies will be all over politicians to put a stop to it.
Last edited by Bender; 05-29-2013 at 10:00 PM.
That's when you know the Docs are on to something good.
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