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Keeping Physicians on Board with Health Care Reform
8/28/2009
We have approached a crisis point within a national health care system that is inefficient, expensive and unavailable to millions of Americans. With a new administration in Washington, an economy in recession and millions of people losing employer-subsidized health insurance along with their jobs, it appears the time to reform health care has come.
Many physicians agree with the vast majority of American consumers who say that fixing US health care is a top federal-government priority. However, health care reform could add to an already high level of physician frustration and exacerbate an already-evident US physician shortage.
On top of growing physician frustration, increasing the number of Americans covered by health insurance will mean greater demand for health care providers.
What Should We Do?
A few of years ago when LocumTenens.com asked physicians what they’d like to change about practicing medicine, many said, in effect, "Give the practice of medicine back to the physician."
As noted earlier, physicians want autonomy. Many of them have specific ideas about what health care reform should address. Here’s what they’ve told LocumTenens.com:
- Universal health insurance (at least for catastrophic events)
- Elimination of health insurance companies
- Simplified billing/reimbursement
- Emphasis on preventive care
- Physician tax credits for providing indigent/free care
- Medical education financed through commitments to serve the underserved
- Liability/tort reform
- Greater physician authority in treatment decisions
- Reduced spending/focus on end-of-life "heroics"
- Greater patient/individual responsibility
- Greater/universal buy-in for health information technology
In response to an early-2008 LocumTenens.com survey, one physician observed, "It might affect my income (decrease). This is very important, especially if we are going to encourage young people to go into medicine. The prestige and income are dwindling, and the lifestyle is poor...Young doctors are graduating with huge debt loads."
Having projected a shortage of 85,000 to 96,000 physicians in 2020, the Council of Graduate Medical Education (COGME) suggested the following tactics to minimize the physician shortage:
- Increase scholarships and loan repayment awards from the National Health Service Corps (NHSC)
- Expand NHSC to include non-generalist specialties
- Continue funding federal programs to encourage practice in underserved areas
- Align graduate medical education payments with health care policy goals
To mitigate effects of a growing physician shortage COGME also suggested increasing the supply of nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and other non-physician clinicians.
Accepting locum tenens assignments offers physicians the freedom to practice medicine on their own terms. Moreover, hiring locum tenens physicians allows health care facilities to retain patients and revenue that could be lost to competitors when no provider is in place.
Observers from many sectors agree that something must be done to make health care work better for more Americans. Perhaps the current recession will be the tipping point needed to force major health care reform.
Surveys conducted within the last year indicate that both American consumers and physicians want health care reform that provides coverage for more people. However, pursuing reform at physicians’ expense will simply force more doctors out of medical practice and discourage others from entering the profession.