Quality of Care

Tuesday, May 31st 2005
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Trying to understand and anticipate where medicine and the business of medicine will be in four years when I graduate or 3 or 7 or 11 years when my residencies are complete is difficult. The fact is just from the experiences I have had I almost certainly understand the current state of medicine (both private and academic) better than the majority of medical students matriculating this fall. Yet the fact remains I’m not a doctor. Yet :)

As such my view is limited, and so some of my favorite posts from the blogs I read involve discussions of business issues on which I’m fairly naive.

Medrants has dedicated significant time not just bemoaning and discussing the state of medicine as a business but also looking at the reality of the future and opining on ways that doctors can prepare for it and change with the times.

Two topics I have enjoyed and which he has discussed at length are pay discrepancies between specialties and how it effects residency choices for med students and pay-for-performance in which physicians who meet certain quality indicators and have better patient outcomes may receive better compensation. In the post above he discusses the problems with defining what shape and form these quality indicators will take in the future.