General Surgery News – Spam in a Can

General Surgery News – Spam in a Can:

For those of you who have been spending your days operating and taking care of patients instead of keeping up with the latest machinations from central planning to separate you from the fruits of your labor and control of your practice, ACOs are bundles of providers who will receive a global payment for a specific patient encounter, like a cholecystectomy. Who will bill, receive and divide the money is uncertain, except that it won’t be you, the surgeon. The only thing certain is that like diagnosis-related groups, the sustainable growth rate, and relative value units, this latest iteration in health care spending discipline will be gamed and ultimately relegated to the alphabet graveyard of designer cost-containment programs invented by health policy wonks who have an aversion to traditional medicine based on the private doctor–patient relationship. I’ll say this much for them: They are undeterred by their unbroken string of failures. Maybe they’re Cubs fans.

An interesting read, if you want to really appreciate the “old school” approach of a lot of our colleagues (this was sent to me by one). My thoughts:

Some interesting phrasing choices in this piece.
“outside secular influence”
“the surgical workforce has been transformed by macroeconomic factors from the ownership class to the labor class.”
“Ownership and labor never agree on anything”
“Strip away the thin veneer of status, and the chief of surgery at Johns Hopkins and the junior surgeon at Kaiser both serve at the pleasure of a boss, punch a clock and take fire training and corporate compliance classes.”
“you had the common values, aspirations and headaches typical of small-business owners.”
“cookbook medicine” (Really? Who still thinks this way?)
Anyway, it all made me think of the Master-Slave morality dichotomy. Since Jesus was the epitome of the ‘slave’ side of this, I’m comfortable with my position, as is, I expect, is Dr. Russell.
And it also made me think of this great quote:

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it”

Max Planck

– Sent using Google Toolbar

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