Reply to S/o What the f do you all want from doctors?

Forum Index » Health and Medicine

Reply to "S/o What the f do you all want from doctors?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Hit reply too fast. Do you see how this makes zero sense? You want them to know better than you but you don’t want to do what they tell you to do.

Also if they take all those phone calls they’ll never have time to actually see patients in person and also they won’t get paid. Sucks but true. Your quick phone call, multiplied by 15, plus the documentation required for it, would take up hours. [/quote]

There's A LOT of real estate between "makes $50k a year" and "makes $600k a year". Doctors could stop over-scheduling, spend more time with patients, take phone calls, work on bedside manner and still make what any American would consider a lavish sum. Nobody is asking them to impoverish themselves, just maybe make a couple thou less a day.[/quote]

Doctors have zero control over their own schedules. Unless they own their own practice, in which case they are struggling to make ends meet thanks to the insurance industry paying Pennies on the dollar.[/quote]

It looks a lot more than pennies on the dollar when I get my statements. They get hundreds for a few minutes of face time.[/quote]

What percentage of what is billed do you think goes just to pay overhead to run the clinic, straight off the top, not even including malpractice insurance, maintaining licensure, etc. -- just the lights on, employees paid, and utilities?[/quote]

This is true of most businesses with rent, salaries, insurance, material and utility costs. The patient is not paying pennies though. They are paying hundreds and thousands of dollars a year. [/quote]

Right. So what percentage do you think thatis, for a medical practice?[/quote]

How can I tell? Are you in Manhatten or Front Royal, which affects rent and salaries. What kind of doctor are you - OB-Gyn or dermatologist or PCP, which will impact insurance premiums. Are you a concierge doctor or part of a hospital system? How many support staff do you employ?  How long do you spend with each patient?

I don't know the answer to these operating cost questions for my tree service or local supermarket either. Why don't you provide these figures to us?[/quote]

So you're judging the cost and assigning salary, without any sense of what the average overhead is for a basic medical practice? Okay.

Sure, if you want to know, I'll pull it for you. I'm still interested in what your guess would be. I think it would be informative. FYI, it's different for medicine than most small businesses, for various reasons of specific responsibilities, liabilities, and constraints. [/quote]

I'm assuming that overhead is different at every office. Is your office the average? Are your overheads the same as the practice two floors up?  How do you even know what a competitor's overheads are?

Rents can be different within the same building, let alone between suburbs, cities and states. A practice manager with 20 years experience is getting paid more than a younger one. Same with nurses, doctors, lab staff and cleaners.  Some practices employ more support staff than others.  Some specialities require more expensive equipment than others. Some doctors like to provide high end facilities while others go for a more spartan environment. [/quote]

There's actually research on this, across more than 15,000 practices affiliated with the Medical Group Management Association (among other research). There are some outliers, but there is a clustering around the mean. The average is around 60-70% overhead off the top, and that does not include all expenses.

Private equity is of course interested in driving that down. They can get it to 35-40%, or even 33%. Any non-billable time is cut. Interaction times are cut. You charge for everything you can, sort of like the current airline experience model. Bill for seat choice, nickel and dime for bags, all that. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics