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The Effects Of Obesity Go Beyond One’s Health

Obesity impacts income, especially among women, according to a report from The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services’ Department of Health Policy.

In 2004, wages among the obese were $8,666 less for females and $4,772 lower for males. In 2008, wages were $5,826 less for obese females, a 14.6% penalty over normal weight females, the researchers concluded after examining years 2004 and 2008 in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.

The research shows that there are significant differences in wages dependent upon race that couldn’t be accounted for by measuring pre-recession (2004) and recession (2008) measures. In 2004, Hispanic women who were obese earned $6,618 less than those who were normal weight. In 2008, Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

Old Nursing School Photograph Portrays A Different Time In The Profession

I love old nursing photographs. Some of them are works of art. This photo from 1933 is an excellent example. The ladies posing in this photo are graduates of the Providence Hospital School of Nursing, Oakland, California. This striking photo chronicles the history of the nursing profession. These women were the original Angels of Mercy of the 20th Century.

It was a time of innocents, but even then, you had to be tough to make it as a nurse. It was a dismal time for nurses, and the beginning of the nursing shortage. According to a letter written by the ANA, through its Executive Committee and sent to hospital directors around the country back in 1933, nurses faced many challenges. There was an over abundance of nurses in the early 1930s. That meant that Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Nurse Ratched's Place*

Hospitalist Compensation Increasing With Productivity

Hospitalists in adult medicine reported an increase in median compensation from $215,000 to $220,619 in 2010, while pediatric hospitalists median compensation rose from $160,038 in 2009 to $171,617 in 2010. Though hospitalists earned more in 2010, they also reported higher productivity. The annual median adult hospitalist physician work relative value unit (wRVU) rate was 4,166, a 1.4% increase over last year.

According to the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) and Society of Hospital Medicine’s (SHM’s) State of Hospital Medicine: 2011 Report Based on 2010 Data, compensation varied by how it was structured. Adult hospitalists with 50% base salary or less reported median compensation of $288,154, while adult hospitalists with 51-70% base salary reported median compensation of $249,250. Adult hospitalists who reported 71-90% base salary earned Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*

Physicians Are Unhappy, But Do They Have It Worse Than The Rest Of The Country?

Many physicians, and especially primary care physicians, aren’t happy campers. Why should they be? They feel disrespected, overworked, over-managed, and underpaid. They tell me they wouldn’t advise their children to go into medicine. Some feel that physicians are singularly beset upon. “Our government acts toward the medical profession in an abusive fashion. No other industry or profession is humiliated in this way,” writes RyanJo, a frequent commentator to this blog.

I can appreciate why many physicians are upset. They’ve had a decade where the Medicare SGR formula repeatedly has threatened to cut their fees, only to have Congress enact last minute reprieves that replace the cut with a small token increase that has not kept pace with their costs. Last year, Congress actually allowed the cut to go into effect and then retroactively restored it, creating havoc in physicians’ offices during the four weeks when they weren’t being paid. Like Charlie Brown and Lucy’s football, they are told each year by their members of Congress that that “this will be the year when the SGR will finally get repealed, really, for sure, we promise, this time will be different”–only to see it pulled away at the last minute.

In the meantime, they are constantly hounded to be more accountable for the care they deliver, to fill out just another form, to document their encounters, to get Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at The ACP Advocate Blog by Bob Doherty*

Conflicts Of Interest Within Clinical Trials Can Jeopardize The Participants

Follow the money.

Earlier this week, I blogged about the growing economic relationships and even mutual dependency between medical device manufactures and physicians, citing a pre-emptive strike against an Institute of Medicine report that recommended closer regulation of medical devices before and after they enter the market. Such ties, though, are only one part of a broader medical-industrial complex that has enormous impact on public policy in the United States.

A 2009 White Paper by the Seton Hall’s Center for Health & Pharmaceutical Law & Policy reported that “ drug and medical device companies fund up to 80% to 90% of all clinical trials; in 2005, and that by 2004, three-quarters of all of the clinical trials paid for by industry were in private physician practices or for-profit research centers.” The paper’s authors argue that such trials “create potential conflicts of interest that possibly jeopardize the rights and well-being of research participants as well as the integrity of research results” and that “the goal for public policy should be to structure physician-investigator payment to achieve financial neutrality between treatment and research.”

A recent web posting by a medical billing company unabashedly crows about the extra income doctors can make from clinical trials. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at The ACP Advocate Blog by Bob Doherty*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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