Do burned out pain docs ever become device reps

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knoxdoc said:
Granted, some EMGs are a pain, but for the most part it is pretty straight-forward and mundane. When the test is over, my job is done.
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I loathe doing EMGs.

My professional satisfaction working in 2 orthopedic groups during my career, improved markedly once I was able to find someone else to do the EMGs for both practices.
 
bedrock said:
I loathe doing EMGs.

My professional satisfaction working in 2 orthopedic groups during my career, improved markedly once I was able to find someone else to do the EMGs for both practices.
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Agreed. I no longer do them. Have a general pmr and late career interventional pain pmr doc doing full time emg. They do not need to deal with prior auth, patient messages, etc. Do your thing, dictate the note and go home. Definitely not for me, but if you don’t mind doing EMGs and are OK making less money then interventional…. Doesn’t seem like a bad gig.
 
Agast said:
Asking for a friend
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I haven't seen it, only seen OR techs and that kind of thing.

I think the money for this type of gig is extremely variable. Feast or famine.

The main issues I see would be that you have to HUSTLE, do lunches, and otherwise suck up to potential marks for sales. And the other thing is supporting what you immediately recognize as BAD MEDICINE. No one likes a judgemental rep, so your "friend" would never fit in...
 
hyperalgesia said:
I haven't seen it, only seen OR techs and that kind of thing.

I think the money for this type of gig is extremely variable. Feast or famine.

The main issues I see would be that you have to HUSTLE, do lunches, and otherwise suck up to potential marks for sales. And the other thing is supporting what you immediately recognize as BAD MEDICINE. No one likes a judgemental rep, so your "friend" would never fit in...
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Agree with this
 
You probably wouldn’t be the device or pharm rep but rather the medical director or something like that. May pay pretty well and you wouldn’t have to be the salesman
 
Isn’t the reimbursement total crap now anyway. I can’t imagine doing that test all day and getting paid nothing for it. That’s a recipe for burnout
 
I would suspect they might do better looking into medical science liaison work for a company like Vertex or someone with a new pain therapy.
 
Dr. Ice said:
Isn’t the reimbursement total crap now anyway. I can’t imagine doing that test all day and getting paid nothing for it. That’s a recipe for burnout
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EMGs used to pay decently, halfway between clinic and interventional pain procedures. All the codes got cut in half in 2012, and now pay around the same as clinic. I saw that coming and got out of doing EMGs at the end of 2011!
 
bedrock said:
EMGs used to pay decently, halfway between clinic and interventional pain procedures. All the codes got cut in half in 2012, and now pay around the same as clinic. I saw that coming and got out of doing EMGs at the end of 2011!
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Some commercial payers, comp, and PI still pencil well.
 
drusso said:
Hire a tech...

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Good thought, but I am very quick with the nerve conductions now. If I get a tech I would end up spending more time trying to interpret or redo their studies. You can move along pretty quickly with a Cadwell and some templates.

Regarding the above comments on pay - yes EMG definitely took a hit in 2012. Let's face it though, interventional spine has been hammered as well. The only way to make it in PP spine now is to crank through a high volume of patients every day. That means more procedures (and therefore a commensurate higher risk of complications), more phone calls, more medications, etc. At this point in my career, I have no desire to take on those risks and headaches for what I consider to be insufficient and still steadily declining reimbursement. I have all the respect in the world for everyone here who continues to forge onward.
 
The other option, which is probably very easy and lucrative, is to do what @Baron Samedi does which is do peer reviews from his home to deny care for the insurance companies. It’s also personality dependent. If you like to sell things, then device rep is good for you. If you like to do the opposite, then denying patient care is probably for you. That being said, whenever I do a peer review it’s pretty reasonable.
 
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Agree with Bob. I've been thinking a lot lately about the power and origin of a salesperson personality. It almost never overlaps with personalities of people who have to succeed in what many would consider the hard way, like doctors.

To whatever extent a salesperson is trainable, I think it would be more difficult to do after medical training. Within seconds, I can practically always tell who's an attending physician in a medical setting. The process changes us in ways that are not compatible with sycophancy.

But I think it could be worth a shot if you're actually interested and failure wouldn't ruin you. I can't recall specifics, but I have heard of at least one doc doing this.
 
JoeLores said:
The other option, which is probably very easy and lucrative, is to do what @Baron Samedi does which is do peer reviews from his home to deny care for the insurance companies. It’s also personality dependent. If you like to sell things, then device rep is good for you. If you like to do the opposite, then denying patient care is probably for you. That being said, whenever I do a peer review it’s pretty reasonable.
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Baron is a regular pain doc, when he said he works on the other side he meant civilian medicine
 
JoeLores said:
The other option, which is probably very easy and lucrative, is to do what @Baron Samedi does which is do peer reviews from his home to deny care for the insurance companies. It’s also personality dependent. If you like to sell things, then device rep is good for you. If you like to do the opposite, then denying patient care is probably for you. That being said, whenever I do a peer review it’s pretty reasonable.
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How lucrative?
 
Agast said:
Baron is a regular pain doc, when he said he works on the other side he meant civilian medicine
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nope…..he said…..”Also I'm no longer a military doc. I've moved onto the greener pastures of peer-to-peers and denials.”
 
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Ok, well you missed the part where PainApp specifically asked him and he clarified he was private practice now. I believe he used to be stationed at one of the bases and was doing actual military medicine not VA work.
 
buddababa said:
actually you're wrong, agree with agast and others.
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Probably just a lapse in judgment when he realized he told a room full of doctors that he works against them. Either way, what’s done is done.
 
I do some work comp emgs. Usually easy but of course last week Charcot Marie tooth and upper trunk plexopathy. Medical student thought were cool. I didn’t.
 
JoeLores said:
Probably just a lapse in judgment when he realized he told a room full of doctors that he works against them. Either way, what’s done is done.
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Actually, @Baron Samedi told me what he really wanted was to get into regenerative medicine pain in Florida. I thought to myself, Too bad Doctodd isn’t around because he could have bought that practice
 
JoeLores said:
Probably just a lapse in judgment when he realized he told a room full of doctors that he works against them. Either way, what’s done is done.
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i guess when everyone is saying something and another person is saying something, clearly everyone is wrong...
 
Agast said:
Actually, @Baron Samedi told me what he really wanted was to get into regenerative medicine pain in Florida. I thought to myself, Too bad Doctodd isn’t around because he could have bought that practice
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Oh my, what is going on in this thread lol. I had to block that guy (creepy vibes) so I'm late to the party.

As for the original question, sometimes things pop up on Drop Out Club that look interesting if you want to pivot to non-clinical.
 
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