Salaries for Doctors, Not Fees

An excellent article in the Times highlighting Bassett Hospital in New York where they pay their physicians a salary. Their costs are in the bottom 10% of NY Hospitals but their quality ranks in the top 90%.

This is true across the board. Fragmenting doctors into independent practitioners tied together by nothing but a desire to get paid as much as they can always leads to markedly lower quality.

The doctors at Bassett take a financial hit to do their jobs better than 90% of other physicians.

This is the future of healthcare in America. There will be two camps. Doctors who want professional satisfaction by practicing higher quality medicine for less pay. And the others who want to practice quantity medicine and sacrifice their patients’ health.

However, I don’t believe that the future of physician groups should be centered around brick and mortar like they currently are. They should be virtually organized in a locality much like a Facebook group that connects all of those independent doctors practicing in the community. This will allow likeminded doctors to come together and have professional satisfaction practicing higher quality medicine and a simpler life in partnership with their patients. Doctors who join the group agree to a salary and benefits. And patients who “friend” the doctor group agree, in partnership with some entity who “insures” them, to pay them a set rate per month for all the care they need.

Hmmm…sounds like Hello Health doesn’t it?