Monday, March 25, 2013

Early Retirement?


There is some buzz about the possibility or probability of physicians retiring early due to unhappiness with PPACA (Obamacare). Bitching and whining is hardly new for physicians, and there are plenty of people wanting to put a bad spin on Obamacare.

So I have worked my way through a part of my national network; and have a decidedly non-scientific survey about the buzz.

Some possible trends:

The electronic medical records installation and networking is a major nightmare, with many older physicians resenting the cost and hating the input devices.

Many physicians believe their only financial sanctuary is a closer integration or even employment by a hospital or integrated network, and many are bitter about a forced marriage with possibly a dysfunction partner (physician relations with hospitals have always been tense at best).

The rate of change or at least the ubiquitous talk about change (ACOs, bundling, extensive quality metrics) gets tiresome; death by meetings and memos.

The Medicare push to prevent hospital re-admissions has interfered with clinical judgment and put elderly patients at risk; ditto for earlier discharges. Nursing home and hospice work is a tiresome pain in the butt.

The stock market is coming back, and with it physician 401(k) balances.

The physical health of older physicians is not optimal, 30 -  40 years of stress and sleep deprivation take a toll (consistent with my observations over the decades).

So, smoke or real fire? Time will tell

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi
I am Steve Gray Stevenson, a member of some Medical coding & Billing community. I had landed on your site “http://healthcarethinktank.blogspot.in/" and found the articles really worth reading. The quality of your content is so good, that it made me request you something. I love to write medical coding and billing articles and would like to contribute something for your site. I can give you an original guest post and if you want, you can suggest me the topic also and I will write accordingly. Not only that, I will give you the total rights to edit the article and modify it as per your needs.

In response I expect you to give a link back to one of my endorser who helps me to continue my passion and serve individual sites and blogs like yours.

Please let me know your thoughts. Waiting for your positive.

Thanks
Steve

Unknown said...

Hi
I am Steve Gray Stevenson, a member of some Medical coding & Billing community. I had landed on your site “http://healthcarethinktank.blogspot.in/" and found the articles really worth reading. The quality of your content is so good, that it made me request you something. I love to write medical coding and billing articles and would like to contribute something for your site. I can give you an original guest post and if you want, you can suggest me the topic also and I will write accordingly. Not only that, I will give you the total rights to edit the article and modify it as per your needs.

In response I expect you to give a link back to one of my endorser who helps me to continue my passion and serve individual sites and blogs like yours.

Please let me know your thoughts. Waiting for your positive.
Thanks