| ■ Change Way Family Doctors Get Paid: Study | 2010.04.30 |
| Family doctors do a lot of unpaid work, and changes need to be made in how they're paid, says a new study. It looked at a five-physician family practice in Philadelphia and found that each doctor had an average of 18 patient visits a day and was paid about $70 per visit, The New York Times reported. However, the study also found that each physician made 24 phone calls a day to patients, specialists and others; wrote 12 drug prescriptions; read 20 laboratory reports; reviewed 11 X-ray and other imaging reports; wrote and sent 17 e-mail messages interpreting test results; examined 14 consultation reports from specialists, and consulted with other doctors or advised patients. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, "really quantifies the huge amount of invisible work in primary care," Dr. Thomas Bodenheimer, a professor of family medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told The Times. He added that the burden on family doctors will get worse under the new health care law, which will increase the number of Americans with health insurance by 30 million. |