[cherry]

this is no lie....I was talking to a doctor in private practice and he said that there will probably be no docs in private practice in a few more years...the hospitals will hire "hospitalists" and set the agenda....when to admit, when to administer antibiotics, when to discharge etc...

I feel sorry for the doctors.....imagine studying all those years and devoting your life to helping people and then being told who, what,when,how, and how much by the desk sitters....

[knittnmom]

Before Obamacare was passed, we were working with an internal medicine specialist, who said she would probably have to leave the country to practice medicine the way she believed it should be practiced. Only problem was, she wasn’t sure where she could go that didn’t have socialized medicine.

[ArmstedFragg]

You’re making an important point. This case is an example of a situation where the physician would have to go outside the protocol and keep the patient on either a hunch, or personal knowledge of what “normal” is for that patient and an awareness that she doesn’t look normal. Hunches generally don’t make hospitalists popular with their masters, and a system that destroys the concept of a personal doctor/patient relationship pretty much eliminates the second possibility.

Whether she’d have survived even with immediate antibiotic treatment is an open question, but the case does illustrate the potential systemic flaws when the “doctor as patient advocate” aspect of medicine is lost.

[Kimmers]

A friend of mine is an orthopeadist. He is so frustrated with “hospitalists”....they don't want to work very hard, they do not understand or make an effort to understand the surgical patient.....my friend understands the importance of keeping the blood sugars low post op and the hosptialists will ignore his orders and screw up the patients blood sugars doing things “their way”.....it is a real mess