It’s been awhile since I’ve posted, and I’ve been getting emails asking if I’m still around. I’m here, but I’ve really taken a hiatus from the whole medical school thing recently. Now that I’ve been out of the game for awhile, it’s getting tougher and tougher to post shit about medical school.

I’ve recently taken on a new client in a revenue-sharing agreement, and I’ve been working hard at that. I’m currently reading a book on personal finance that kicks all kinds of ass, and should be required reading if you’re of high-school age or above. I think I’ll write more about that book in near future, but right now I’m kicking back and pulling in the $$$ doing what I love.

I’m not disappearing forever, but I’ll definitely be posting less in the future. Just giving you guys a heads up, but I love what I do and when I’m doing it, it’s like a vacation.

Updates soon (hopefully).

Hoover

A recent story in the New York Times talks about some of the reasons physicians are frustrated with medical practice today. I’ve outlined some of the more concerning reasons below. Please, for your own well-being, consider these before you dig yourself too deep into the medical school hole.

1. Loss of Autonomy
“I’d write a prescription,” he told me,” and then insurance companies would put restrictions on almost every medication. I’d get a call: ‘Drug not covered. Write a different prescription or get preauthorization.’ If I ordered an M.R.I., I’d have to explain to a clerk why I wanted to do the test. I felt handcuffed. It was a big, big headache.”

2. Payment Denials
“Thirty percent of my hospital admissions are being denied. There’s a 45-day limit on the appeal. You don’t bill in time, you lose everything.”

3. “Informed” Patients
“Stories of patients armed with medical knowledge gleaned from the Internet demanding antibiotics for viral illnesses or M.R.I. scans for routine symptoms are rife in doctors’ lounges.”

4. Malpractice
“Malpractice worries also remain at the forefront of many physicians’ minds, compounded by increasing liability premiums that have forced many into early retirement.”

5. Decreased Realized Income
“Doctors are working harder and faster to maintain income, even as staff salaries and costs of living continue to increase. Some have resorted to selling herbs and vitamins retail out of their offices to make up for decreasing revenue. Others are limiting their practices just to patients who can pay out of pocket.”

6. Declining Reimbursements
“A 10.6 percent cut in Medicare payments to physicians is scheduled to take effect on July 1. Further cuts are planned in coming years. Many doctors have told lawmakers that if the cuts go through, they will stop seeing Medicare patients. But reimbursement cuts are only a small part of doctors’ woes today.”

7. Naive Pre-Meds
“I was naïve, Saeed Siddiqui said. When I was a resident I thought it was enough to take good care of patients. But the real world is totally different.”

The practice of medicine has made its way over the hill. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.

All quotes taken from the original article.

I’m not a fan of socialized medicine. I firmly believe that health care is a privilege and not a right. Many people — including uninformed pre-meds with high hopes of saving the world — think socialized medicine is the best thing since sliced bread.

Doing some reading today, I came across a reply to an article on $8 per gallon gasoline. Here’s what this person had to say, emphasis mine:

“You have never lived in a country with social medicine. I have and it does not work. It took me six months to find a doctor in Canada… everyone’s shining example of a great social health care success story. I was told by their social medicine govt office to call all of the doctors in the phone book and I might get lucky. I tried to get my knee repaired (ACL reconstruction) however, the waiting line was too long ( 15 months) so I went to the states and had it done in two weeks. I was in England and hurt my knee and could not get a doctor to prescribe pain medication nor get me crutches to walk. Montreal has five major hospitals all with CAT Scan Machines…4 out of 5 broken and the fifth with out of date software. Keep in mind social medicine is not medical care on demand, they prioritize and categorize, my age, health and whether the surgery or care is needed. What you don’t hear is the number of Canadian citizens that come to the states to get medical care that they cannot get in Canada. Additionally, the average monthly tax rate in Canada of my peers was close to 50%.”

Does this sound like a great system to you? People need to wake up and realize that socialized health care is not equivalent to easily-accessible, cheap (or free) medical care on demand. This is just one of probably many examples of why it doesn’t really work.

Over the weekend as I was looking at rankings and such, I noticed that MSH has obtained “authority” status from the Big G. Sites that are an authority in Google’s eyes are awarded what are known as “site links” within the natural search rankings. Here’s a screenshot:

An authority listing is a site that has gained a significant number of natural links, total number of daily searches relative to other sites in similar niches, and a good amount of “link juice” from those linking out.

Thanks to all who have wrote about, visited, commented on, and/or linked back to Med School Hell. Without you guys, obtaining authority status just isn’t possible.

What’s Coming Up?

I’m currently working on some new posts for MSH as well as a forum that should be live within another week or two. We have myself and one other moderator on board at the current time, but if anyone else would like to volunteer to moderate shoot me an email.

While once a top-of-the-top profession, medicine has been sliding down in-line with a regular old J.O.B. The mainstream media is beginning to see it, too. A recent article in the New York Times spells it out:

As of 2006, nearly 60 percent of doctors polled by the American College of Physician Executives said they had considered getting out of medicine because of low morale, and nearly 70 percent knew someone who already had.

This is hardly news for you guys that have been reading MSH for awhile. I do find it interesting that the mainsteam media — and the general public who consumes it — are now beginning to get the education that they deserve.

Physicians just don’t have what they used to have in terms of prestige. The money is still above-average, but the amount of social respect is dwindling.

In a culture that prizes risk and outsize reward — where professional heroes are college dropouts with billion-dollar Web sites — some doctors and lawyers feel they have slipped a notch in social status, drifting toward the safe-and-staid realm of dentists and accountants. It’s not just because the professions have changed, but also because the standards of what makes a prestigious career have changed.

This decline, Mr. Florida argued, is rooted in a broader shift in definitions of success, essentially, a realignment of the pillars. Especially among young people, professional status is now inextricably linked to ideas of flexibility and creativity, concepts alien to seemingly everyone but art students even a generation ago.

Patients are more savvy about their conditions, and news stories of physician FUBARs add fuel to the fire. The old-school, hardcore docs are finally retiring out of the profession and the younger kids that will be entering college and careers are reshaping the way society views the medical professional. I see a day in the near future where physicians will be reduced to technologists in the public eye, and that’s only the beginning.

Medicine just isn’t what it used to be. Will it ever recover to the olden days? I highly doubt it.

Check out the article, The Falling-Down Professions. Don’t say I didn’t tell ya so.