According to the American Medical Association, roughly two percent of medical students are entering primary care internal medicine.\u00a0 That’s an alarming number say medical experts who fear a lack of adequate compensation\u00a0and ability to even pay\u00a0back hefty medical school loans is keeping\u00a0students away from family medicine.<\/p>\n
The fomula used to pay doctors is\u00a0based on a system developed by a Harvard\u00a0economist 20 years ago called relative value units or\u00a0RVUs.\u00a0 It is a point system that tabulates\u00a0points\u00a0based on how much training a\u00a0doctor has or what kinds of equipment is used or procedures\u00a0are performed.\u00a0\u00a0Theoretically the more procedures and higher tech equipment involved in the patient’s care, the more the docotor can bill.<\/p>\n
Specialty doctors like cardiologists and radiologists tend to have no problem garnering rvu’s, but primary care physicians can’t seem to add up enough to make it worth their while these days.<\/p>\n
The average medical student comes out of medical school\u00a0with anywhere from $140 to 200\u00a0thousand dollars in medical loans.\u00a0 While specialists\u00a0can command salaries of up to\u00a0$500 thousand dollars annualy, primary care physicians might make around $190 thousand dollars a year\u00a0.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Considering the\u00a0workload, the cost of doing business and the cost of living period, many medical students are shaking their head and looking into more specific fields.<\/p>\n
There has been an effort to revamp the rvu system over the years to level the playing field, but\u00a0\u00a0it is a small part of the overall healthcare debate on Capitol Hill.\u00a0 There is however a group called the Meidcare Payment Advisory Commission, which among other things is recommending a one time bonus to primary care physicians to entice future doctors…but no word on whether that will be adopted by any government panel.<\/p>\n
Until then many in medicine are concerned that primary care physicians will become a dying breed, even still those who acknowledge the need to update the reimbursement system, caution moving too fast, at the risk of harming the patient in the end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to the American Medical Association, roughly two percent of medical students are entering primary care internal medicine.\u00a0 That’s an alarming number say medical experts who fear a lack of adequate compensation\u00a0and ability to even pay\u00a0back hefty medical school loans is keeping\u00a0students away from family medicine. The fomula used to pay doctors is\u00a0based on a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5758,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-430067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5758"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430067\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}