Doctors In Financial Trouble: Many Selling Their Practices & Switching Careers

[clacy]

I'm in medical sales and have been for 10 years. I can say that most docs are still doing quite well financially, but having to work harder and harder to make the same $$. Their average work week is no less than 60 hours. I know many that work 80 hours, every week.

They are taking on higher expenses (malpractice insurance and to meet all of the HIPA and coding bullshit that is madated by the government). All the while, their reimbursement shrinks.

The government says "we're reducing the reimbursement for xyz procedure, so fuck you". The doc then can either except medicare/medicaid patients or not. After the government lowers reimburesment, then the insurance carriers follow. Many procedures for medicare/medicaid patients actually lose money, but typically the docs will still do them out of kindness (no bullshit).

Overall, they still make pretty good money, but they work like dogs in order to do so.

The specialists are doing much better than the primary care docs. Family practice average about $150k/yr. Considering you have to be very smart, go to school until your 31'ish, and work 60+hours/week....that's not much.

Having checked many doctor/surgeons' credit for financing equipment, I can say that you would be shocked to see how many of them make $300k and have horrible credit. I've had numerous occasions where a doctor had to give me 2 or more credit cards in order to put down a $10,000 deposit on equipment (the rest financed).

The ones that have some business sense (or at least hire someone that does to run the office) tend to do much better than the ones that are clueless (which is a lot of them).

 

[clacy]

Quote from spinn:

All of you sheep do not realize how bad, and often incompetent American DRs are.

According to the WHO......healtcare in the USA cost 2.5 times as much as anywhere else on earth, and is the 37th best.

DRs in my area generally work 4 days a week, from 9-4.

Almost every DR I have seen in the last five years has given me advice that was not only wrong, but the opposite of what I should be doing.

American DRs may of had their salary cut from 500k to 300k, but why would I care when most of what they have done for me is wrong?

They are amoral sociopaths and their suffering is deserved and appreciated.

\

This is total bullshit.

We have the best healthcare system in the world, bar none. WHO stats are bullshit. Stats can say anything you want them and do you honestly think that the WHO doesn't have a socialized healthcare agenda?

When a Suadi Sheik or a wealthy Canadian needs a liver transplant........they find a Jewish doctor in the US to do it.

90% of all medical advancements (you know, the ones that keep people INCLUDING YOU AND YOUR FAMILY alive longer) come from the US.

Our med schools lead the world by a long shot.

The average doctor probably works at least 60 hours/week (surgeons for sure). Primary care is probably more like 50.

The average doctor makes WAY less than $300k/yr.

 

[spinn]

Quote from clacy:

\90% of all medical advancements (you know, the ones that keep people INCLUDING YOU AND YOUR FAMILY alive longer) come from the US.

My father died at 56 after being "treated by a DR". His mother lived to be 99. My brother in law is essentially crippled after being given 100 times the proper dose of medication, at 38. Michael Jackson is dead after his $150k a month DR got him high all day for months on end.

AS a good sheep in medical sales I am sure you actually believe what you posted.

Did you read the part where I said that 90% of the advice I have received from DRs was not only wrong, but the opposite of what I should be doing? ie stop eating salt when my body desperately needs it?

Why do the biggest liars make the most money?

 

[Shazbatz30]

Quote from shortinterest:

Maybe gov. should pay off school loans and pay a flat salary to incentivize good doctors and Disincentivize doctors becoming doctors just for the $$$. ?????

Bingo. Long live socialism.

 

[ashatet]

We all want to make more money. One of my cousins is a doctor, and he used to make 5K a day. That was not enough and he wanted to make more and gave up medicine and got into some kind of casino thing.

Doctors will always make at least 150K no matter how stupid they are or what they practice. They will always be employed. Most doctors are married to doctors and that doubles the money they bring in.

So, all in all, unless you hit it big on wall street or become a big exec of a large firm, it is better to be a doctor.

Their life stinks though.

Quote from ByLoSellHi:

To think I was 2 years shy of attending med school, before a tragic family event changed the trajectory of my career path.

My buddy's father is an oncologist, is burned out, hates medicine, and went so far as to strongly discourage his son from becoming a physician.

It all falls into place after a while.


- "But financial considerations have never been as prominent as they are today, probably because so many hospitals and doctors, especially in large metropolitan areas, are in financial trouble. More and more doctors are trying to sell their practices, or are negotiating with hospitals for jobs, equipment or financial aid.

At hospitals, uncompensated care is increasing as patients suffering from the economic downturn lose health insurance. Admissions and elective procedures — big moneymakers — are declining. Hospitals are cutting administrative costs, staff and services.

“More and more you’ll see people in medicine get M.B.A.’s,” a doctor told me at a seminar, in a prediction borne out in my experience. “We are in a total crisis, and I don’t know the answer.”'-

A Doctor by Choice, a Businessman by Necessity
By SANDEEP JAUHAR, M.D.
Published: July 6, 2009

To meet the expenses of my growing family, I recently started moonlighting at a private medical practice in Queens. On Saturday mornings, I drive past Chinese takeout places and storefronts advertising cheap divorces to a white-shingled office building in a middle-class neighborhood...

-continued-

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/health/07essa.html?em

 

[DrPepper]

Quote from spinn:

My father died at 56 after being "treated by a DR". His mother lived to be 99. My brother in law is essentially crippled after being given 100 times the proper dose of medication, at 38. Michael Jackson is dead after his $150k a month DR got him high all day for months on end.

AS a good sheep in medical sales I am sure you actually believe what you posted.

Did you read the part where I said that 90% of the advice I have received from DRs was not only wrong, but the opposite of what I should be doing? ie stop eating salt when my body desperately needs it?

Why do the biggest liars make the most money?

I will always remember a story that Wayne Dyer told when he was trying to illustrate the law of attraction. A stranger found out that Wayne lived in Florida. The person said that she had always wanted to move to that city and she was wondering what the people were like there. Wayne said, "what are the people like where you live?" The stranger said, "they are very friendly, wonderful people". Wayne said "that is how they are in Florida, too". Wayne knew that if the woman attracted friendly, wonderful people in her city, she would attract them wherever she went.

The point is that there are certainly good and bad doctors out there, just like there are good and bad people in every city. I think that someone who has had your experiences and has developed such hatred towards doctors is destined to have repeated bad experiences.

If you have not read Trading in the Zone, it applies similar principles to trading.

 

[Anaconda]

Quote from domestic:

dumbass, i said "father in law". i am a trader, not a doctor. i am only in the know of what he tells me at the dinner table and per his descriptions much money is still there; for young and old docs.

angry immature losers like you bring nothing to the table. good luck in continued ruining ET.

You're the dumbass who is assuming industry knowledge because his trailer park mom got lucky and snatched up a wealthy old far who happens to be a doctor. Let me guess, is he a fat disgusting slob, hence why your white trash mom even had a chance? I bet you wonder what your real daddy thinks about the situation, but his ass has been long gone ever since the broken condom episode involving your mom, 20 bucks and the back of the interstate highway parking lot.

Your daddy in law is obviously clueless about the general state of the industry. The only reason I know is because here & there I go to events which are held by doctors who run private practices or work for them. It's the new millennium and the belief that medicine automatically means big money no longer holds true. Family practices are having problems staying in black while seeing patients nonstop most of the week. Everytime I ask, how & why in disbelief, they always reply "the costs have soared through the roof in the last several years"

 

[DataCruncher]

Quote from spinn:

My father died at 56 after being "treated by a DR". His mother lived to be 99. My brother in law is essentially crippled after being given 100 times the proper dose of medication, at 38. Michael Jackson is dead after his $150k a month DR got him high all day for months on end.

AS a good sheep in medical sales I am sure you actually believe what you posted.

Did you read the part where I said that 90% of the advice I have received from DRs was not only wrong, but the opposite of what I should be doing? ie stop eating salt when my body desperately needs it?

Why do the biggest liars make the most money?

so were the doctors sued for malpractice? I am curious about what condition you had where you needed more salt....I am trying to decrease my salt intake and it is a pain in the ass

 

[aegis]

Poor doctors. A quarter of a mil a year just doesn't go as far as it used to.

 

[Scataphagos]

Quote from aegis:

Poor doctors. A quarter of a mil a year just doesn't go as far as it used to.

You should be rooting for doctors to keep making lots of money. They are the ones who provide the tax revenoos to support the Obama hand-outs. Without the docs and their ilk, kool-aid drinkers get NOTHING!