Physician Contracts: Negotiating your first contract – part I

As residents, we enjoy a rather sheltered life. We work hard, read digest and debate cutting edge medical research and studies, and try to do a darn good job taking care of patients. The one thing we don’t do? Learn the business of medicine. While some residents will go on to continue in academia, the majority will emerge to engage in one or the other form of private practice. All these endeavors involve a crucial legal document – the contract, made between the employer and the prospective employee i.e. You! The employer can be a hospital, a private group or even a solo practitioner trying to hire a partner. In this post, we share our thoughts about negotiating your first physician contract.

While this post will ramble on, perhaps in multiple parts, there are two extremely important observations that need to be put out right now to emphasize their importance: (more…)

The reason more doctors don’t discuss vaccines

“Why Don’t More Doctors Discuss Vaccines With Their Patients?” That is the question being asked on one of my favorite reads, the Wall Street Journal’s health blog. The author, Ms. Laura Landro, goes on to point out:

…high level of…failure by many physicians to discuss vaccines with their patients, let alone administer the ones recommended by the CDC…
For doctors, it often comes down to costs….

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Categories: Medical, Musings
Tagged with: Healthcare reformsInsuranceMedicalMusings
 

Mayo Clinic drops Medicaid patients

Mayo Clinic drops Medicaid patients

Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. A  medical institution much admired by medical professionals and touted as a model of high quality, high efficiency healthcare by no less than the President. Justifiably so, I suppose.

Recently however, Mayo decided to drop Medicaid patients from two nearby states – Nebraska and Montana, citing “low government reimbursement rates”. Government reimbursement rates are admittedly found to be low by many institutions and physician practices, not just Mayo. One wonders what happens to these patients and the hospitals that will be providing care to these patients now that Mayo is no longer available to them. Are they somehow going to be reimbursed at a higher rate than Mayo? Highly unlikely, one would think.

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Categories: Medical, Musings
Tagged with: Healthcare reformsInsuranceMedicaidMedical
 

Do we need healthcare reform?

The proposed healthcare reforms and the resultant debates are the rage nowadays. Proponents and opponents are getting in each others’ face in ways not perhaps imagined by the administration. The head butting is so intense at times that to a casual bystander, it might appear that people have forgotten why they were arguing in the first place. No one is ready to give an inch as they stand nose to nose, screaming and sending spittle flying, the viewers’ eyes riveted to their jugulars which appear dangerously close to burst point.

In this milieu, hospitals and doctors’ offices continue to go about their business as usual. As a matter of principle, we tend to keep our views to ourselves, as surely a majority of doctors do. Sometimes a patient would attempt to get us sucked into the current national argument but they don’t get very far, running into our carefully crafted stone wall of non-committal answers. But there are other times, when one encounters a situation that tends to precipitate musings. I found myself in such a situation on a busy office day recently. A situation which can be frustrating and is probably played out almost every day in physicians’ office all over the country.

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Categories: Medical, Musings
Tagged with: Healthcare reformsInsuranceMedicaidMedicalMedicareMusings
 

Who is an international medical graduate competing with?

Who is the foriegn / international medical graduates’ chief competition? Is it the American Graduate? or the other international medical graduates?

Doing well on the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) is very important, obviously! In applying for residency in the USA, an IMG is up against the American graduates as well as other IMGs.

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USMLE – preparation

Now that you know the stiff competition you are up against, it’s time to start preparing for USMLE. As always, information is critical! You need to know:

  • when to take USMLE
  • how to prepare for USMLE
  • which preparation materials to use for USMLE

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Residency in the USA – 2

If you are thinking about doing a residency in the USA, you must’ve given it a long, hard thought by now. The most important first step in the process is gathering information, which is why you are on this blog !

Know the process and deadlines beforehand. Be very very aware of the deadlines because getting delayed in the process – even a little – can severely effect your application. Residency programs get hundreds or thousands of applications each year and if you missed deadlines, you better have a sparkling, blindlingly brilliant CV for you to call and ask them to review your (missed) application.

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Residency in the USA

You are an international medical graduate, i.e. IMG (or Foreign Medical Graduate?) and you would like to get a residency in the USA. Very good intention! But where do you begin?

The process, to summarize, consists of the following:

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FMG or IMG ?

So which is it? Foreign Medical Graduate or International Medical Graduate?

Some years ago, it used to be FMG (remember that little organization called ECFMG?). Then, the term became IMG. Why?

The standard answer would be, “International Medical Graduate” is a more politically correct term. Fair enough. But to accommodate this website’s name, enter a peculiar muse: the new term has been brought in to play probably because a lot of American citizens graduate from medical schools located outside of USA, e.g. the Caribbeans. Technically speaking, they aren’t really “foreign”, are they?

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