Dr. Gross brings up an interesting question in today's reimbursement driven world (NYTimes). Everybody else charges by the time they spend dealing with your problem - your lawyer, mechanic, plumber.
Why not your doctor? Nobody pays him to listen to you for half an hour although this may be exactly the thing that you want him to do. Your doctor has to document your problems in the chart and how he is planning to deal with them. Some problems take 10 minutes, some problems take 1 hour and 10 minutes. The reimbursement for a particular problem is the same although all patients are different.
Nobody wants their doctor to be as fast as the 10-minute Jiffy-Lube change. So many patients feels rushed because their doctor is pressured to see a patient every 10 minutes to cover the overhead. May be a change in the current reimbursement practice will make the things better for both patients and doctors...
Reference:
How Much for an Hour of Schmoozing, Doc? - NYTimes, a free registration is needed to read the article
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.