Tell the ABR. If they nuked lifetime BC certificates tomorrow, you'd fix the problem in a heartbeat. @scarbrtj absolutely nailed it
The process has morphed into BS. About 10 years ago, the ABR's stance was everyone has to take a Clinical Board Exam Lite of about 150 questions, many questions quizzing on the latest studies, at a PearsonVue center every 10 years. On top of the PQI and CME etc. That was pretty annoying but a lot more "challenging" than the 2-a-week OLA we got now which I feel to be a wasted mini-mental status exam ("What does a physicist do?" "Should plans be approved before treating a patient?" etc) on an age group at low risk for dementia. I'm not really complaining on my end, but in comparison to the complete lack of MOC hassle for full boomers, it's pretty unfair IMHO. And now that we have hard data that the zero-MOCers are hurting patients, and the logic from the ABR is that MOC protects patient safety... Well just like supervision for thee but not for me, there's also MOC for thee but not for me in our ranks too. Protecting patient safety is a very malleable thing for this (ASTRO and) ABR group.
I think those in their mid to late 50s fall into that category as well?
From a purely financial standpoint, the NCI centers charging 3-5x more and cherry picking which insurances (i.e. no HMO or Medicaid) they want to take is as big, if not a bigger problem, it just doesn't seem to get the same press, unfortunately.
They are both problems, but one is worse. We have loads of evidence going back 20 years that on a macroscopic level the United States does not utilize more resources but that we charge more in health care. I can shoe you a ton of data from jama nejm etc going back to the seminal it’s the prices stupid” that prices are the seminal problem. Where is the data that on a population level we are delivering more radiation that other western countries?
At an NCI center in a captive market, that probably costs as much as 15-20 fx of 3D at a freestanding center
"It's the prices, stupid"
actually I detest ageism. All -isms really. I should just say zero-MOCers! But there is a component of "fear of hypofx" that was instilled as a course of training in the very distant past. In 2004, talking about 17/2 for lung CA palliation...
Won't matter if some" special" places get to charge Medicare more
You would intuitively think that but it doesn’t seem to be the case: we are not testing more and utilizing more. We are just charging higher prices.
jamanetwork.com
Will certainly help, but hospital prices are single worst offenders.
Someone just printed trillions this year and it wasn't Bernie, hell he made the IRS put his damn name on the checks....
You can't possibly think it's this simple. Can you? How do you "get the money out of medicine?" How do you expect to be paid? My medicare patients sure seem worried about how they are paying for their healthcare. I guess someone forgot to tell them it's free? You went to med school to sign up to be a government employee? Everything the government touches turns to bloated, mismanaged, horribly cost-inefficient garbage. They suck at basically everything. Private industry always does better. Who's immediately stepping up and making all these COVID vaccines and drugs (Hint: It's not the government: Pipeline: Investigational Therapies for COVID-19 - MPR)
Just nationalize healthcare and problem solved?
The US has the best healthcare system in the world. There is a reason people flee their crappy socialized systems and come here for treatment.
We have the best cancer outcomes in the world.
Cancer Survival: The Start of Global Surveillance | CDC
A large international cancer survival study called CONCORD-2 reported trends in five-year survival between 1995 and 2009 for close to 26 million cancer patients diagnosed with one of 10 common cancers: breast (women only), cervix, colon, leukemia, liver, lung, ovary, prostate, rectum, and stomach.www.cdc.gov
Are there problems? Sure. But we're still the best.
The Bernie Sanders idiotic idea of just printing eleventybilliontrillion dollars and throwing it blindly at the system isn't going to make us better.
Problem? What problem? Billionaires! Did somebody say breadlines?!
The current efforts to help with pricing transparency are a huge step in the right direction. It's not about "getting the money out of medicine," It's about getting the cronyism out of it and making it have to abide by free market principles like other industries. Capitalism works and it's why we're the best.
