commentaries

In today's public forum or Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and others, it is up to the patients and their family to grade doctors with both positive and negative reviews. We complain about our servers at restaurants, our mechanics, cable and cell phone companies all in a public way. Do the same for your doctors and lawyers. Don't lie and then they will no defense should they threaten to sue you. Call them out whenever you need to. Remember, 50% of the doctors out there graduated in the bottom half of their class!

therabbi- do you think demonizing doctors who pull 24hr hours shifts, get asked to do more with less, all in the effort to save our lives is the best idea? Especially when these are mistakes, not calculated spiteful acts? Look, there are some morons out there no question, anytime you have millions of people in a profession stats show you will have morons. But most people don't go to medical school/residency/etc... to screw up on purpose. There are roughly 48million inpatient procedures a year in the U.S. so 4,000 screw ups is .00008% of the time. These aren't mechanics that just learn on the job, they went to school most likely went into a LOT OF DEBT to help us. Lawyers on the other hand LOOOOOOVE when they screw up because they can sue for money. Look at John Edwards, he sued dozens of times for excess of $60m, folks, we all pay for that with our fees and premiums. I'm not saying you shouldn't be compensated for malpractice or negligence by "one of the morons" but my god how much is enough? Especially if it's an honest mistake? If we have a "gun culture" we definitely have a "I'm gonna sue culture." Sadly compensating/lawyer fees/etc.. are a tiny percentage of costs compared to medicare fraud. But anyway, I don't think posting on Twitter if your doc is good or bad is the way to go. Especially becuase people love to complain and say/post things on social media they would never say in the court of law or if they had the doc there to defend themselves.

"All hospitals should report using the same standards of data collection and the same definitions of procedures and errors." This is the key sentence of this article. My job requires that I provide data for all sorts of hospital activities, yet the explicit definitions are often lacking. Words that have clinical meaning, often have financial/payment implications that are not in sync. Is an inpatient admit a patient who is formally admitted as inpatient financial class, or someone who is in the inpatient bed being cared for by inpatient nurses? The correct answer frequently depends on what the data is to be used for.

In hospital-based operating rooms, there is a team involved in the surgical procedure . .not just a lone surgeon. There is a scrub nurse, ciculating nurse, nurse anesthetist; the surgeon may have an assistant, such as another MD, Physician's Assistant(PA), and OR techs. There are at least 6 pairs of eyes watching that surgery. This is a surgical procedure issue, not a 'surgeon' issue. The only exception is when the surgeon thinks he/she is infallible . .and most operating rooms no longer tolerate those prima donnas.

Let's start by making errors of US Congress Members public!

Doctors have to stop trying to run the whole show. Although they are definitively the ones with the scalpel, there are other skill categories which are more attuned to detail orientation than doctors per se, such as people who could successfully manage something like an 'instrument checklist form'.

40% of Doctors said they are going to retire once Obamacare is fully implemented. I'm sure the remaining can be demonized and ridiculed to the point of retirement. Yeah this should help, lol.

valkyrie11 - 40% of Doctors said they are going to retire once Obamacare is fully implemented. ----------- Good. I wouldn't want a doctor that's only in it for the money working on me anyway. I'll take one that became a doctor becuase he loved the job.

As a new doctor myself now in residency and enjoying one of my few days off...reading stuff like this really makes me regret going into medicine. Some days, I just get quite sick of the system we practice in and sick of the demanding, rude, disrepectful, threatening, and even violent patients I see day in and day out. I can't say I'd recommend young people persue medicine.

"""I'll take one that became a doctor because he loved the job."""............Yes, good luck finding that one, especially with the 10-fold increase in ICD codes. Love, love,love. ;o) Even better, the govt is unrolling its plan to pay based upon "patient outcomes and satisfaction," rather than production. Good luck if you're a poorly controlled diabetic, hypertensive, or heart disease patient-->we see it even now where patients are bluntly or stealthily told they arent welcome at "this clinic." Of course, since many young doctors are 300-400k in debt, can I blame them? A: Nope. Healthcare chaos is coming, and it will be fascinating. I am just trying to get my arms around 140,000 diagnosis codes--must be some dandies!