Professionally equal DO's and MD's misunderstood

[DO/MBA]

I think most people go into DO school thinking that they may be considered inferior to an MD. I see it in a lot of topics here and at school. The REALITY is it doesn't matter. We work together, get paid the same, and do the same stuff. Most MD's don't care. Yeah sure I've heard the horror stories, but in my experience it is a false dicotomy. You will find in practice that you have a business to run, and you get paid last. More insurance companies are starting to not cover OMT. This presents a HUGE problem for our profession. None of us want or even can afford to do OMT, even though it is a great modality for treating many problems. The ONLY way to fix this is through research. As the patients' bill of rights comes into effect, insurance companies will start to trend toward evidence based medicine treatment modalities (The insurance companies will not take losses, they will increase premiums and deductibles, while decreasing reimbursement to physicians and hospitals). OMT is, as of now, not considered one of these. The professions are beginning to merge. i.e.(Ask an MD if they believe in treating the whole peron, duh) The more policies that are made, the more we must conform. I hope we are able to keep our identity, but maybe it is for the better.
Take Care and Good Luck to those getting their degrees MD,IMG MD, and DO

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[PalCareGrl]

Does anyone else feel that when we begin to practice (many years away for me) that our biggest adversary will be the insurance companies? Does anyone have any ideas on how to "fix" or change the system? This is a big concern for me, and I want to help change the system and help it work for the patients who need it and also for physicians as a profession. But as a lowly pre-med person, I have no idea where I would even begin to start.

 

[mmcnemar2004]

PalCareGrl,
One of the most recently talked about changes is the "Medical Savings Account" or MSA. The idea is for employers to quit giving money to a profit making group and give to their employees in a lock box for medical use only. There are a lot of little things that need to be worked out with it such as does it continue to build each year? or is it taxed? It is one of the best ideas that I have seen. For major tragedies you would still be covered by a Major medical insurance plan (Car wrecks, Triple CABG, long Hospital stays ect.) However, for regular visits to the doc they would pay a fee for service out of the MSA. Medicare and Medicaid would still be in place. I think that you will probably see in our lifetime the big time managed care era disipate. The patient bill of rights and the sudden rise in popularity of the physician anti-trust exemption proposal will eventually do in most of these companies.

 

[Fooman]

During undergrad, I participated in an experimental physical rehabilitative therapy project on chronic stroke patients. Our objective was to restore or improve function to limbs of stroke patients.

The results? Amazing. And I'm not being biased just because I was on the research team.

Part of the experiment was to find an objective way of measuring improvements made by patients after their therapy. After several years of perfecting it and documenting the protocols, it's now in national clinical trials.

While it is not OMT/OMM, but rather physical rehabilitation, it has some similarities. As you know, insurance companies also do not cover most physical rehab therapy. Well, hopefully our research will help change some of that as we can clearly show them the improvements made by patients who underwent the therapy and those who didn't.

 

[Diane L. Evans]

Being out on rotations the allopathic docs see me as another med student, one her knows her neuro! Learn your anatomy well! Ask intelligent questions, read the upcoming journals or sign up with a site that can give you a quick synopsis ie MDconsult.com
(then reiterate upcoming clinical trails etc to a procedure/pt you're attending will be quite impressed) and you'll be fine.

Go the extra mile!
Diane