that's the dream there's no easy gig unless you work the good ole boy system and you're a lifer, IMO.
my wife is about to become the equivalent of department chief and she's under 3 years out of residency.
rv12 just be there for her and be supportive. It'll be fine I didn't match (passed step one but didn't kill it as needed for Ortho). First year of the SOAP. Scrambled into prelim year. Ended up getting Ortho spot outside of the match (like 3 weeks after the soap) but couldn't take it because people didn't know soap was binding (first year problems). 8 million different emotions. Ended up graduating from #1 Ortho trauma program in the country, didn't even match, was a college and pro team surgeon and now I just want to be a tech bro. Itll be fiiiiiiiiine. You can tell her your e-bros from the Internet will be happy to talk to her. But we have to work in some sort of obgyn surgical process joke in there somewhere.
Residency was fun but single surgeon living in downtown ATX put that to shame. I got it all out of my system and am now happily engaged.
I do not miss being the spouse for someone going through all this God speed everyone still in the salt mines
Anyone here have experience working with your local PAC? I want to start getting more involved with the OrthoPAC since clearly no one gives a shit about doctors and reimbursement
I am not politically active at all but our average ortho in town makes $800K with several making $1.2M so yeaaaaaaa
I got mid scores on Step 1 so was worried about matching radiology. Didn’t get interviews at a lot of the places I really wanted but ended up still getting a top 20 program with good vibes. For me, the program and city I matched made a huge difference in the radiologist I became but agree there’s good training all over the place out there
national mean is significantly less than that. It’s still very good, but it’s around $500k-550k or so.
Current projections for 2030 based on decreases in reimbursement show us making a minimum wage (hourly rate) for the amount of time needed to adequately perform and follow a total hip. But definitely don't be proactive in standing up for your specialty
Yeah I know. I have multiple ortho friends around the country who don’t make what ours do around here. Owning the orthopedic hospital and having incredibly high surgical volumes while simultaneously having a dedicated ortho trauma team to handle call makes for a lucrative and efficient practice.
I personally feel adequately compensated for my work as a PCP. I fully expect that compensation will slowly decrease to try to offset rising healthcare costs. Compared to GPs in other countries with socialized medicine, I make significantly more than they do. Again, partially blessed due to my very better than average pay or mix and frequency of intraoffice procedures, but I also do med malpractice defense on the side for some extra income.
All the data shows physician owned and run hospitals significantly outperform all others with PE backed being the lowest but thanks to stark laws and certificates of need we can't scale. Instead we're run by a bunch of worthless admins who don't understand medicine. The way we got to this problem in the first place is dismissive attitudes and just taking it. I always said in residency don't complain unless you have a solution. Now that I'm living la vida locums I have much more free time and I love convincing people I'm right so... OrthoPAC *jazz hands*
I'm getting more and more of my buddies asking about locums as a side gig. Seems like a big red flag if the the thing you spent your life training for is no longer making ends [happily] meet.
I don’t mind physicians owning the hospital, works well for them and patients are happy. They do get super lazy and ask ME as an outside doc without privileges to help clarify their inpatient coding questions on my patients in there and I have a monthly lmao as I slip that request into the shredder
Physician compensation is way down the list of problems with the American healthcare system and should not be the motivation for either getting into medicine or organizing political action.
most people i know who went into ortho did it for....dubious reasons and why their extremely lavish lifestyle might be unfulfilling at the end of the day
I mean there are some reaaaaaal shitty organizations and don’t blame anyone for leaving them to do locums and make more.
How you involved in medicine again? Well you must know some shitty people. No one in their right mind would go through this tract for the money. I know stripe and azure devs that make way more money for a fraction of the work. I love Ortho. I love fixing hip fractures, I love doing nails, I love helping people. When I didn't match I had a family friend who said they could have gotten me into a derm residency after a transitional year but I said no, I love orthopedics, it's been hands down my favorite of any rotation I've ever done. I wish I liked derm because I like making a lot of money for not much work.
100% my situation. My first job burned me the F out but I love doing locums where I don't have to worry about billing, office politics or cramming patients in between cases. I show up and do good work, that's all I have to worry about. It's great.
there are a lot of shitty people in medicine, especially surgical fields, so yes but the latter seems at odds with your claims of wanting to just be a tech bro and lobbyist for ortho pay
you're allowed to do whatever you want i don't think ortho pay is the reason orthopods are unhappy or in the top 10 reasons
yeah dentists make tons of money and kill themselves too, its almost like money in and of itself isn't a solution to anything once you get into leisure tier lifestyle
What do you think the top ten reasons doctors are unhappy? I'll even give you a wide berth and not make it specialty specific.
While the compensation is good, I’m not sure I’d call any medical specialty leisure tier. I’m fairly certain I’ve decreased my life span a good chunk due to stress.
Also I just want Lyrtch to once and for all point to the spot on the doll where the doctor hurt him that one time and maybe then he can stop despising all of us
You realize to it there is more than just money here involved right? You have to be able to sustain a practice. If reimbursements go down you now have to do more work to make the same amount to cover overhead. So you increase the number of patients seen but there is a finite amount of time in the day so now you decrease the amount of time able to spend with one patient. Oh wait now there are patient satisfaction scores that are directly tied to reimbursement (see above for why this important). Luckily I can at least dictate what surgeries need to be done on my patients.... wrong, prior authorization is here! Can you see?
the increase of clerical work requiring physician time, hospital systems that are non responsive to patient needs, our entire health care system not being built to really care for anyone except the ultra wealthy causing mental distress for physicians trying to navigate that, the encroachment of venture capital into medicine focusing on short term financial benefits over long term stability that benefits the workers (focus on case load, then next year we focus on patient acuity, then next year we focus on length of stay), its all stupid shit because we've built our entire system on financial extraction
i live a life of extreme luxury due to occasionally sleeping with one half of the physicians i know are good folks, half I wouldn't let treat my worst enemy
Physicians are humans just like the rest of us, tune in at 10 o’clock for other earth shaking revelations
Quoting these to look at formatting. I'm on my phone so it's hard to respond but I will later. I definitely don't disagree with 1&4 and 2 but it's needs more elaboration, 3 and 5 are A little bit of whataboutism (not sure if that's exactly the term I'm looking for) but I see what you mean. That being said these are all things that PACs can influence. I don't see why people are against physicians getting more involved in the decision making process instead of staying on the sidelines.
And as such we should be treated like it. I'm sure you know a couple people at your health system who committed suicide. Why is our well being just being glossed over. /millenialdoctor
i think people are cynical about physician activists being good actors after a half century or more of physicians mostly just advocating for limiting residency spots to prop up salaries similar to homeowner groups mostly just worried about their property going up in value and not really worrying about the rest
Maybe the boomers or are you referring to the current Korean protests? When we expanded from 3-->5 in 2 years everyone in our residency was ecstatic. in the last ten years they have added 2 more residency spots per year and multiple fellowships.
You say half the doctors you know suck or are terrible but advocate allowing more of the populace to become doctors, curious