The Appeal of Anesthesiology
Quote:
>situation. Anesthesiologists, like other physicians who have
>traditionally done "procedures", have been earmarked to hav
>our reimbur{*filter*}t reduced by the government, in order to redistribute
>reimbur{*filter*}t to the "cognitive" specialties. Economics aside,
>I bristle at being labeled as "non-cognitive" since my research
>work largely deals with the relatively unique (for medicine)
>cognitive science of anesthesiology.
David, I don't think there is an intent to label what you do as
"non-cognitive". That would be absurd. What is being said is
that "purely cognitive" work should be worth more than 10%
of cognitive plus doing procedures. The amount I can bill for
spending an hour with my patient is probably about one tenth
of what you can, depending on what it is you are doing. Maybe
even more if you have several rooms going with nurse-anesthetists
your a supervising. I think radiology is the worst case of
abuse in this regard. It badly distorts practice, and we find
neurologists with their own scanners deriving 90% of their
income from reading patient's scans rather than seeing their patients.
This is a real travesty. Since you do take on risks that we
don't, some increment of compensation is justified, I think,
but nothing like what it is now. Our anesthesiology department
is so wealthy, it is almost {*filter*}, while we have to bow and scrape
to the administration for everything we get, since we don't bring
in megabucks. It also distorts anesthesiology, since you find
the some of the most materialistic medical students scrambling to
get into the field (along with ophthalmology, radiology, etc.) instead
of those who have a research interest, which is what I think
is such a good opportunity that anesthesiology provides.
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Gordon Banks N3JXP | "I have given you an argument; I am not obliged
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