Oh Really?

[stookie]

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I recently meet a 4th year who will be matching this year. He is going for neuro. He told me that his grand plan is to work at home by reading EEGs all day long for about $100 a pop. He said he plans to read about 20 a day. Is he tripping? Can you really do this?

Discuss.

 

[Terpskins99]

Not sure about the compensation part (who knows what changes will be made with Obama in office), but I don't see why not.

Personally, I think it'd get kinda boring just reading through EEG's all day long.

 

[neurologist]

Yeah, this would be my grand plan too . . . unfortunately, it's kind of hard to do.

First of all, not many general neuro practices generate 20+ EEGs a day -- he'd probably have to hook up with a moderately large number of practices, which, while it's not impossible, would require an awful lot of salesmanship and networking on his part. Practices that do generate that many studies are likely to be either large hospitals or specialized epilepsy centers, and they will be reading their own studies, thank you very much.

Second, it takes a decently trained/experienced neurologist maybe like 5 minutes to read most routine EEGs; whatever the reimbursement, that's a pretty minimal investment of time for any level of payback, so there's not much incentive to farm it out. Long term inpatient EEG monitoring takes longer to read, but it's also probably going to be done in house and not contracted out.

I'm not saying it can't be done, just that it won't be easy.

And no, it's not boring. Seeing patients all day is boring. Looking at squiggly lines rocks! 😀

 

[typhoonegator]

Sounds like a great plan, and you could certainly read 20 per day. Sadly, like most seemingly perfect plans, it would be very hard to implement.

Reading EEGs is a very attractive way to earn some extra bank, and a lot of neurologists would jump at the chance to read a few per day. In fact, the non-epileptologists I know who get to read routine EEGs had to kind of maneuver themselves into that position. Many of them are pretty senior.

So, to pull off this plan of reading 20 EEGs per day, you'd need to go around to many community hospitals and private practices and somehow steal the reading rights from whoever currently has them. You would need a bunch of sites, because there just aren't THAT many EEGs being done out there, and epileptologists are reading them at places that are doing a bunch.

You'd probably have to go into business by yourself also, because I can't see why anyone would hire you into a practice or appoint you into an academic position to reach your work-from-home dreams. You'd have to take a few clinic days per week or do some ward months to get hired, and then your job starts to look like everyone else's!