Can preventive medicine physicians practice clinical medicine like family practice docs?

[mainetrout]

Greetings,

I purposely created this thread in the family medicine forum to see what family docs and residents think about this.

Can a physician who has completed ONLY a preventive medicine residency practice outpatient clinical medicine just like a family medicine physician normally would?

IF so as a follow up, do you think the preventive medicine doc would have trouble getting reimbursed from insurance companies/medicare/medicaid for clinical practice due to being a preventive medicine doc as opposed to Family Med?

I appreciate the feedback.

Thanks.

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[DrMidlife]

PM&R's internship year plus licensing qualifies you to do as much urgent care work as anybody. Nobody's going to let you do peds or obstetrics, of course, from PM&R, those being key differences between FM & IM.

Reimbursement isn't the blocking issue. Getting hired or contracted to practice outpatient primary care would be the thing. If you want to practice in an underserved area you can get away with plenty. But if you want to not have to be the grownup in charge of running a practice, you have to get somebody to hire you, and that tends to mean they want you to be qualified, which usually means BC/BE in something relevant.

I'd expect wanting to do adult primary care with a focus on pain management would be marketable. And possible from PM&R.

Look for @cabinbuilder 's posts on how she gets locums for some basics on what you're expected to demonstrate in the hiring process. If there are other good info spreads on that process on SDN I'm not aware of them.

Best of luck to you.

 

[mainetrout]

PM&R's internship year plus licensing qualifies you to do as much urgent care work as anybody. Nobody's going to let you do peds or obstetrics, of course, from PM&R, those being key differences between FM & IM.

Reimbursement isn't the blocking issue. Getting hired or contracted to practice outpatient primary care would be the thing. If you want to practice in an underserved area you can get away with plenty. But if you want to not have to be the grownup in charge of running a practice, you have to get somebody to hire you, and that tends to mean they want you to be qualified, which usually means BC/BE in something relevant.

I'd expect wanting to do adult primary care with a focus on pain management would be marketable. And possible from PM&R.

Look for @cabinbuilder 's posts on how she gets locums for some basics on what you're expected to demonstrate in the hiring process. If there are other good info spreads on that process on SDN I'm not aware of them.

Best of luck to you.

Thanks DrMidLife,

Good info. Just to clarify, I am wondering about Preventive Medicine Physicians, not Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

 

[anthroguy]

PM&R's internship year plus licensing qualifies you to do as much urgent care work as anybody. Nobody's going to let you do peds or obstetrics, of course, from PM&R, those being key differences between FM & IM.

Reimbursement isn't the blocking issue. Getting hired or contracted to practice outpatient primary care would be the thing. If you want to practice in an underserved area you can get away with plenty. But if you want to not have to be the grownup in charge of running a practice, you have to get somebody to hire you, and that tends to mean they want you to be qualified, which usually means BC/BE in something relevant.

I'd expect wanting to do adult primary care with a focus on pain management would be marketable. And possible from PM&R.

Look for @cabinbuilder 's posts on how she gets locums for some basics on what you're expected to demonstrate in the hiring process. If there are other good info spreads on that process on SDN I'm not aware of them.

Best of luck to you.

I think you just confused Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation with Preventive Medicine.
I think the issue with preventive medicine is on what type of residency it is. At my university medical center they had minimal patient contact. It was also a place where some residents went after not liking clinical medicine too much. They came up with decent research ideas and had good projects (though I recall none of them now) and mostly ran stats. I think they all earned an MPH as well.

Compared to family medicine, we were constantly in clinic and doing outpatient and inpatient rotations in any and everything. From my experience with that one program I wouldnt think they would be able to see patients nor would I want them to. Maybe other programs are different?

 

[deleted87716]

A Preventive Medicine residency won't prepare you for primary care. Could you do it legally...? Sure. Could you get hired? Probably not, unless you were working for idiots.

 

[DrMidlife]

aw jeez that was dumb. listen to Blue Dog.

 

[mainetrout]

Thank you all for your replies.

Even in a clinic-heavy preventive medicine residency, you technically only get 2 years of rotations due to 1 year being the academic-MPH year.

I was unsure if those 2 years are enough clinical training to be a good outpatient primary care doc.

Nevertheless, Family Med/IM/Peds seems the way to go if I want to do outpatient primary care.

Thanks All!

 

[wasr55]

Thank you all for your replies.

Even in a clinic-heavy preventive medicine residency, you technically only get 2 years of rotations due to 1 year being the academic-MPH year.

I was unsure if those 2 years are enough clinical training to be a good outpatient primary care doc.

Nevertheless, Family Med/IM/Peds seems the way to go if I want to do outpatient primary care.

Thanks All!

I think occupational and environmental medicine is better than general preventive medicine. It is a sub specialty of preventive medicine and more clinical. Overall lifestyle including the pay is also way better than other primary care specialties including FM and IM. The Job opportunities also great. I have also read that the burnout in this specialty is less than other medical specialties—may be comparable to dermatology.

 

[deleted87716]

I think occupational and environmental medicine is better than general preventive medicine.

If you're trained in FM, you can always narrow your focus to occ. med. if that's what interests you. I have a friend (an FP) who's been doing solo occ. med. for years. She's got contracts with several local employers and is doing great. She does direct-pay primary care, as well, but it's a small part of her practice.

http://www.drdietzler.com/index.shtml

 

[Ericslv]

Greetings,

I purposely created this thread in the family medicine forum to see what family docs and residents think about this.

Can a physician who has completed ONLY a preventive medicine residency practice outpatient clinical medicine just like a family medicine physician normally would?

IF so as a follow up, do you think the preventive medicine doc would have trouble getting reimbursed from insurance companies/medicare/medicaid for clinical practice due to being a preventive medicine doc as opposed to Family Med?

I appreciate the feedback.

Thanks.

There are retired surgeons that take a re-entry course and are practicing primary care in several states.
There are PA and NP's doing it.

So yes. They can.