The Business of Aging

One More Reason Why Changes to Our Healthcare System are Needed

Peggy Peck, Executive Editor at MedPage Today wrote an article titled Survey Reveals Large Numbers of Practicing Physicians Ready to Call it Quits.

She writes:

Nearly half of all practicing physicians, 49%, said that by 2011 they will have limited their practices or quit entirely, according to survey results released today.

And 45% said if they had the financial means, they would retire today.

Yet 78% of the 11,950 physicians who responded to the survey from The Physicians' Foundation said there is a shortage of primary care physicians in the United States.

The survey, mailed to 270,000 primary care doctors and 50,000 specialists, had a response rate of 3.7%.

Importantly, it was mailed from May through July 2008 -- before the market meltdown and ongoing worldwide financial crisis.

Among other findings of the survey:

- 11% of responders said they plan to retire sometime in the next three years
- 13% said they plan to stop clinical practice but want to continue to work in healthcare in a non-clinical capacity
- 82% said proposed cuts in Medicare reimbursement would make their practices unsustainable
- 66% said Medicaid doesn't pay enough to cover the cost of providing care and 36% said the same of Medicare
- 33% said they no longer accept Medicaid patients and 12% said they would not accept Medicare patients
- only 17% said their practices were financially healthy and profitable

And this at a time when our senior population is about to put stresses on our health care system that we've never seen before.

Read her entire article. It's very informative.

Geriatric Courses at U.S. Medical Schools Rapidly Expanding

U.S. medical schools are plugging geriatric courses into their curricula and adding specially trained faculty members as they respond to an imminent boom in the number of older Americans and the need to better understand how to properly care for the elderly.

The details are highlighted in this story,  Medical schools prepare for "silver tsunami".

Why the sudden interest?  The U.S. Census Bureau projects the number of elderly Americans will nearly double to 71 million by 2030, leaving one physician trained in geriatric care for every 7,665 seniors (see other elder care statistics here).

Out of 800,000 doctors in the United States, roughly 7,000 are geriatricians. The country needs another 13,000 to adequately care for today's older population, according to the American Geriatrics Society. The shortfall could reach 36,000 by 2030.

Why the lack of interest  in the field? According to the article, Geriatrics has never been a field of choice for young doctors. Elderly care doctors are paid less than most other physicians and surgeons and the aged can be hard to treat.

WellPoint Partners With Zagat for Physician Rating Tool

WellPoint announced on Monday that it has partnered with Zagat Survey (yes, the restaurant rating company) to rollout a new online survey tool allowing Wellpoint members to indicate if they would recommend a given physician to others and leave open-ended comments about their experience.

Eric Fennel, WellPoint's staff vice president of consumer innovation, says the insurer views the tool as the missing piece in a consumer tool landscape that is mostly dominated by clinical quality and cost tools. "What was missing was that peer-to-peer interaction around what other consumers think," Fennel explains.

True, but limiting the tool to only Wellpoint members is less than ideal. The best social networking or consumer rating sites (e.g., www.yelp.com)   are open to everyone which also increases the number of reviews. And I'm not sure how much leeway Wellpoint will give to reviewers who have a really bad experience. 

Anyway, kudos to Wellpoint for trying and I wish them success. Other insurers should follow suit.

There are already a few physician rating sites but most have limited information or require you to buy a report.  I think ultimately the best physician rating sites will be those social networking or consumer rating sites that already command a large and active audience like Yelp where users have a reason to return day-to-day - and therefore, have better participation.