While I have some disagreements with this site at times, I must applied their post on productivity in medicine.
The point they are conveying concerns one of the reasons why I left conventional medicine and left the broken Healthcare System behind. Daily I was measured by something called a RVU or relative value unit. Someone had term end the work value of certain tasks I did as a physician. They assigned numbers and would add up my work productivity at the end of the day. They would evaluate me in terms of performance and incentives by this number.
This number had nothing to do with whether or not the patient improved, the patient was satisfied, or any other intangible. It just depended on how many patients I saw that day and how complicated I could prove they were. Some of this was out of our control, however we all knew how to boost the complication factor and add to our RVU score for the day. We were taught classes on how to increase our numbers so that insurance companies might reimburse more. Case managers were hired to make sure we did a good job of coding to support these numbers. The hospital benefited when we knew how to play the game. We benefited in terms of paycheck bonuses when we knew how to play the game. I agree with this article in terms of pointing out the fact that caring for another human being should not be evaluated in terms of productivity like a factory.
Combining direct pay medicine where I do not take payments from insurance companies with functional medicine where I spend time searching for root causes of disease meant that I can now care for people rather than some abstract number that somehow was meant to reflect how hard I worked. Instead I can help people live healthier more abundant lives and be evaluated by how well my patients recover from chronic disease.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
I had no idea that doctors were valued this way. How discouraging to those doctors who want to help people get well!
Yes Erin,
We live and work in a broken health system. Those trying to do the right thing are finding an uphill battle.