RCicala Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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asbalyan wrote:
Sorry to hear this.. I sometimes think of LASIK for myself...
LASIK or eye correction surgeries have really interesting history.... I found this text while reading one book (the ref was: "incentive"),
"In the 1990s, the ophthalmologists were building careers on performing cataract procedures. They’d take half an hour or less, and yet Medicare would reimburse them $1,700 a pop. In the late 1990s, Medicare slashed reimbursement levels to around $450 per procedure, and the incomes of the surgically minded ophthalmologists fell. Across America, ophthalmologists rediscovered an obscure and risky procedure called radial keratotomy, and there was a boom in surgery to correct small impairments of vision. The inadequately studied procedure was marketed as a cure for the suffering of contact lens wearers. “In reality,” says Burry, “the incentive was to maintain their high, often one-to two-million-dollar incomes, and the justification followed. The industry rushed to come up with something less dangerous than radial keratotomy, and Lasik was eventually born."
Just like any other technology adaption, incentive and demand played key role. But high incentives sometimes keep the negatives hidden... ...Show more →
It's a bit off topic, so I apologize, but this reminds me a lot of why I left medicine. Although I will mention articles do tend to confuse an M. D.s 'gross revenue' with income. My income was about 20% of my gross revenue. Still a good living, don't mean to say otherwise.
But the overall point is correct. For 20 years I would go to medical meetings in my specialty and we'd have lectures all day about new treatments, new methods of diagnosis, stuff like that. In the evening we'd meet for dinner and talk about interesting and difficult cases.
The last 5 years I was in practice, meetings were largely about 'how to code for better reimbursement', 'managing practice costs', etc. I would sit in a meeting where the expert said "don't diagnose this, diagnose that, you'll get payed 25% more". Don't do this procedure, do that procedure, it pays 30% more.
Obviously, I'm one of the ones who left, so maybe I'm looking back through unrose colored glasses, or maybe I was just old and didn't want to change with the times.
The most interesting thing to me is a couple of years ago, a company called me that puts on seminars for doctors all over the country. They offered me a hefty 6 figure salary if I would give lectures full time on 'how to get out of medicine'. Said it was the most in-demand topic they had. So apparently I wasn't the only one who got sick of it.
Rant off now, thank you for letting me vent. We now return you to your regularly scheduled topic.
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