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Sameer was in private practice for many years. He was a partner of a group in OKC.

He’s somewhat old school, but I would not dismiss him completely. He knows a lot about how prices are set/RVU calculation, the RUC, etc.
A few years... Most of his time was at Mayo and uf iirc. The big picture answer is that the IOAE is the only way private practice rad oncs have been able to survive. Being a single specialty RO group has pretty much gone the way of being a dinosaur, only want to ensure referrals is to get everyone skin in the game
 
A few years... Most of his time was at Mayo and uf iirc. The big picture answer is that the IOAE is the only way private practice rad oncs have been able to survive. Being a single specialty RO group has pretty much gone the way of being a dinosaur, only want to ensure referrals is to get everyone skin in the game
I just don't find it to be helpful to say he's never worked in PP when in fact he was an owner, and changing goalposts to say "oh well it was a few years". Either he worked as an owner and has experience or he doesn't. It's pretty binary.

I don't agree with him on this either - there are winners and losers. They happened to lose that battle.

Over-utilization was not a prostate center thing. It was an everyone thing. Especially academic centers.
 
Yes ASTRO held a big press conference about it

Think someone could get "Academic Medicine's Use of Proton Therapy for Prostate Cancer" accepted into NEJM? Would likely make urorads look bush league in terms of expenditures on a per patient basis.
 
Think someone could get "Academic Medicine's Use of Proton Therapy for Prostate Cancer" accepted into NEJM? Would likely make urorads look bush league in terms of expenditures on a per patient basis.

I'm a huge fan of proton therapy but am getting tired of the increasing rate of patients coming here and asking about protons for literally everything. A patient (who needed emergent whole brain) asked if I could do proton the other week and ultimately the family decided to drive 8+ hours to a proton center without an appointment. Saw another patient on Friday who had been setup for post-operative 5 fraction proton for pancreas but wanted to get treatment locally and thankfully felt more comfortable with a conventional treatment course anyway. Just more and more WTF every day I could go on...

The crap proton messaging is harming patients and leading them to make bad decisions. Even if they don't ultimately end up getting proton treatment for something unnecessary, the second opinions and googling wastes time/delays care and emotionally manipulates vulnerable people.
 
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I'm a huge fan of proton therapy but am getting tired of the increasing rate of patients coming here and asking about protons for literally everything. A patient (who needed emergent whole brain) asked if I could do proton the other week and ultimately the family decided to drive 8+ hours to a proton center without an appointment. Saw another patient on Friday who had been setup for post-operative 5 fraction proton for pancreas but wanted to get treatment locally and thankfully felt more comfortable with a conventional treatment course anyway. Just more and more WTF every day I could go on...

The crap proton messaging is harming patients and leading them to make bad decisions. Even if they don't ultimately end up getting proton treatment for something unnecessary, the second opinions and googling wastes time/delays care and emotionally manipulates vulnerable people.
Once again MDACC leads the way

 
I just don't find it to be helpful to say he's never worked in PP when in fact he was an owner, and changing goalposts to say "oh well it was a few years". Either he worked as an owner and has experience or he doesn't.
Or maybe it isn't? 10+ years at Mayo/UF and a few at okc? If he was in PP why would he blatantly misrepresent what the IOAE allowed private practitioners to do?

He was either ignorant of that or misrepresenting it. Which is it?
 
Or maybe it isn't? 10+ years at Mayo/UF and a few at okc? If he was in PP why would he blatantly misrepresent what the IOAE allowed private practitioners to do?
Because there were two sides to this.

The side me and you are on (we are okay with physician ownership) and the other side.

Some people really are against Doctor ownership. I don’t get it, either. Doesn’t mean it isn’t a sincere feeling.
 
I bet they "chose wisely" and boosted the lumpectomy bed with protons.
Actually I hear the side effects are sometimes so bad with proton breast that patients have to be switch to photons by the boost phase because their skin is "roasted" according to proton therapy techs TRUE STORY!
 
Once again MDACC leads the way

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Somebody who scored a 22 on his MCAT in 2008 and has held a serious chip on his shoulder ever since. I encounter people like this in the medical field all the time who tell a story of how they were premed but felt they could make a bigger impact in healthcare doing X or something...
Omg the worse part is they think they are helping people when they take on these ancillary roles
 
I was kinda joking as in I didn't expect my patient to walk in the door and actually be offered whole brain proton. But curiosity got the better of me. Apparently whole brain proton is actually a thing because of course it is.

John Oliver, as annoyingly smug as he is in assuming that his audience agrees with him on controversial topics, should really do a proton therapy segment. Half of his show includes a segment about how the general public is getting screwed over by some big company or organization. John Stossel was better with his "Give me a break" programs back in the day, but unfortunately he lives on obscure Youtube channels now.

The proton grift is getting ripe for an expose in one of these programs or even a documentary to the general public.
 
I think there are/were probably more than 2 sides to UroRads. I have no direct or indirect experience with UroRads, but in some competitive markets, they impacted PP docs as well academic sites. I know more than a few who grumbled about their tactics. This should not be a surprise as UroRads were (and probably still are) able to capture a significant market share. I do not know of any PP docs who needed to move, or abandon their practice solely because of UroRads (I know a few in Florida who needed to bail out - but that's a whole different world and I think the reasons were multifactorial). Perhaps there are UroRads 'victims' out there though I'd have no idea how many (maybe Sameer has some inside info I don't ?). Health care systems have changed immensely since then, with hospital systems (academic and non-for profit private) gobbling up PCP practices (referral base) and specialty practices (including Rad Onc of course) that it's hard to know what impact if any UroRads has these days on these larger practices. ASTRO definitely went all in on this (yet somehow let dermatologists become the "primary users of radiation therapy for skin cancer") and made some headway with legislation in Maryland that I don't think was ever enforceable. Meanwhile we have the mess that we have today. My impression is that those seeking leadership in ASTRO do so more for careerism than a real desire to lead and change, particularly on the academic side, while those PP who seek these positions are either finding a way to end their career on high note, or trying to enact changes that keep the false claims suits (i.e 21C) at bay.
 
I think there are/were probably more than 2 sides to UroRads. I have no direct or indirect experience with UroRads, but in some competitive markets, they impacted PP docs as well academic sites. I know more than a few who grumbled about their tactics. This should not be a surprise as UroRads were (and probably still are) able to capture a significant market share. I do not know of any PP docs who needed to move, or abandon their practice solely because of UroRads (I know a few in Florida who needed to bail out - but that's a whole different world and I think the reasons were multifactorial). Perhaps there are UroRads 'victims' out there though I'd have no idea how many (maybe Sameer has some inside info I don't ?). Health care systems have changed immensely since then, with hospital systems (academic and non-for profit private) gobbling up PCP practices (referral base) and specialty practices (including Rad Onc of course) that it's hard to know what impact if any UroRads has these days on these larger practices. ASTRO definitely went all in on this (yet somehow let dermatologists become the "primary users of radiation therapy for skin cancer") and made some headway with legislation in Maryland that I don't think was ever enforceable. Meanwhile we have the mess that we have today. My impression is that those seeking leadership in ASTRO do so more for careerism than a real desire to lead and change, particularly on the academic side, while those PP who seek these positions are either finding a way to end their career on high note, or trying to enact changes that keep the false claims suits (i.e 21C) at bay.
We can't just eliminate UroRads because we don't like their tactics. And they have one tactic, really: they (the urologists) control the patients. And as we know, whole health systems base their existence on this "tactic." In-office ancillary cuts both ways, good and bad. I think there is patient care value to having in-office radiology, in-office labs, in-office pharm, in-office PT, etc. We can get jealous and bitter and call our congressman, we can go into specialties that are not "tertiary referral," or we can join with other colleagues in other specialties. That rad onc is an in-office ancillary exemption is a relic of the not-too-long-ago days gone by when "radiology" meant "diagnostic radiology" or "therapeutic radiology" (and the phrase "radiation oncology" didn't even exist).
ASTRO definitely went all in on this (yet somehow let dermatologists become the "primary users of radiation therapy for skin cancer")
Another good reason not to hitch our professional livelihood's future to ASTRO's wagon!
 
I was kinda joking as in I didn't expect my patient to walk in the door and actually be offered whole brain proton. But curiosity got the better of me. Apparently whole brain proton is actually a thing because of course it is.

The proton grift is getting ripe for an expose in one of these programs or even a documentary to the general public.

I’ve submitted story ideas to them before
 
Drew Moghanaki loves himself some Drew Moghanaki.

It's like watching the rad onc version of American Psycho.
def see him with the 2 hookers and coke, but would be in a cheap motel and no monologue about phil collins- just some pathetic babbling about lung sbrt, and then leaving with monkeypox
 
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Oh yes definitely. We should have the surgeons take board exams in metallurgy to understand the creation of the scalpel. Maybe the exam to get your driver's license should have an organic chemistry component on gasoline? Maybe we should also learn the process by which prehistoric carcasses turn into oil over millions of years to really "have a deep understanding of the history"?

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Oh yes definitely. We should have the surgeons take board exams in metallurgy to understand the creation of the scalpel. Maybe the exam to get your driver's license should have an organic chemistry component on gasoline? Maybe we should also learn the process by which prehistoric carcasses turn into oil over millions of years to really "have a deep understanding of the history"?

View attachment 355245
This thread pretty much sums up the field. The radonc world was very eager for Pippa Cospers (I don't know her and will assume the best) circa 2013. The field at prestige programs had essentially transcended clinical medicine at that time in terms of residency selection. Residents were a collection of the "best of the best" who were gonna change medicine through research. Some of them did land jobs as bonified physician scientists, but many are now stuck in a shrinking clinical field. The values of academic medicine will of course favor the former over the latter. Some of the former will end up being chairs who will discourage residency contraction.

We should do a job satisfaction poll for MD/PhDs in clinical only radonc positions.
 
This thread pretty much sums up the field. The radonc world was very eager for Pippa Cospers (I don't know her and will assume the best) circa 2013. The field at prestige programs had essentially transcended clinical medicine at that time in terms of residency selection. Residents were a collection of the "best of the best" who were gonna change medicine through research. Some of them did land jobs as bonified physician scientists, but many are now stuck in a shrinking clinical field. The values of academic medicine will of course favor the former over the latter. Some of the former will end up being chairs who will discourage residency contraction.

We should do a job satisfaction poll for MD/PhDs in clinical only radonc positions.
"Transcended clinical medicine" is the perfect way to describe my entire experience in RadOnc residency recruitment and "training".

Disdain for "the clinic" was palpable by most faculty, and I was simultaneously expected to just "know" clinical medicine without really being taught, and there were DEFINITELY faculty who would openly ridicule me for expressing any interest in clinical topics (vs basic science).

It's really not surprising RadOnc has gone the way it has, I guess.
 
This thread pretty much sums up the field. The radonc world was very eager for Pippa Cospers (I don't know her and will assume the best) circa 2013. The field at prestige programs had essentially transcended clinical medicine at that time in terms of residency selection. Residents were a collection of the "best of the best" who were gonna change medicine through research. Some of them did land jobs as bonified physician scientists, but many are now stuck in a shrinking clinical field. The values of academic medicine will of course favor the former over the latter. Some of the former will end up being chairs who will discourage residency contraction.

We should do a job satisfaction poll for MD/PhDs in clinical only radonc positions.

Taking care of patients - 10/10 (I was committed to cancer patients, even with good scores, grades, and letters, despite what a**holes like Kenneth Olivier says!)
Working in the current academic climate where RVUs are valued over everything else - 2/10
Salary relative to work and effort - 1/10
Knowing that I wasted many years and tears at the bench studying cancer biology only to use none of it in my real, adult job - 0/10
 
"Transcended clinical medicine" is the perfect way to describe my entire experience in RadOnc residency recruitment and "training".

Disdain for "the clinic" was palpable by most faculty, and I was simultaneously expected to just "know" clinical medicine without really being taught, and there were DEFINITELY faculty who would openly ridicule me for expressing any interest in clinical topics (vs basic science).

It's really not surprising RadOnc has gone the way it has, I guess.
Same. I applied in those years and was in utter panic about matching because I do not have a PhD. I am still committed to cancer patients, but as Simul put it on the recent pod, my connection with those patients is waning because of the shorter treatment courses.
 
Residents were a collection of the "best of the best" who were gonna change [radiation] medicine through research
Through all the MD PhDs, all the Eponymous Labs, all the hype... not one drug has ever shown more synergy/additive effect with radiation therapy than cisplatin, and not one drug has shown better radioprotective effects than WR-2721. Both drugs were not discovered or developed by MD PhD rad oncs AFAIK, and both are 60-plus years old. I wonder if Hallahan still trumpets "I have patents on molecules" as much as he used to... he's been at it as long as I've known him (decades), and none of it has gone any damn where. A patent on a molecule is one thing. A patient on a molecule is another. What has truly propelled rad onc along the last 30 years have been the concepts of radiosurgery and IMRT, both developed by neurosurgeons (and in their initial incarnations uniformly and wholly derided by radiation oncologists).
 
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Through all the MD PhDs, all the Eponymous Labs, all the hype... not one drug has ever shown more synergy/additive effect with radiation therapy than cisplatin, and not one drug has shown better radioprotective effects than WR-2721. Both drugs were not discovered or developed by MD PhD rad oncs AFAIK, and both are 60-plus years old. I wonder if Hallahan still trumpets "I have patents on molecules" as much as he used to... he's been at it as long as I've known him (decades), and none of it has gone any damn where. A patent on a molecule is one thing. A patient on a molecule is another.
Many people have cured cancer in rodents or in a petri dish. Unfortunately we have nothing to show for it
 
I believe it was Huey Lewis and the News, and I could definitely see him feeding a stray cat to an ATM.
this was the
This thread pretty much sums up the field. The radonc world was very eager for Pippa Cospers (I don't know her and will assume the best) circa 2013. The field at prestige programs had essentially transcended clinical medicine at that time in terms of residency selection. Residents were a collection of the "best of the best" who were gonna change medicine through research. Some of them did land jobs as bonified physician scientists, but many are now stuck in a shrinking clinical field. The values of academic medicine will of course favor the former over the latter. Some of the former will end up being chairs who will discourage residency contraction.

We should do a job satisfaction poll for MD/PhDs in clinical only radonc positions.
for every pippa cosper, there are a lot more md/phds covering a rural satellite 2 hrs from the main campus with under 5-10 on beam
 
We (for the most part) have one drug. Its target is cellular DNA with which it interacts stochastically.

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I heard a story once of a young rad bio scientist studying novel drugs in petri dishes. There were multiple drugs which showed
Promise. The scientist spit into the dish and ran the same clonogenic experiment, same result wether you pissed or spit on it. think about that!
 
I heard a story once of a young rad bio scientist studying novel drugs in petri dishes. There were multiple drugs which showed
Promise. The scientist spit into the dish and ran the same clonogenic experiment, same result wether you pissed or spit on it. think about that!
They didn’t include a defecation arm ??
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I was kinda joking as in I didn't expect my patient to walk in the door and actually be offered whole brain proton. But curiosity got the better of me. Apparently whole brain proton is actually a thing because of course it is.

John Oliver, as annoyingly smug as he is in assuming that his audience agrees with him on controversial topics, should really do a proton therapy segment. Half of his show includes a segment about how the general public is getting screwed over by some big company or organization. John Stossel was better with his "Give me a break" programs back in the day, but unfortunately he lives on obscure Youtube channels now.

The proton grift is getting ripe for an expose in one of these programs or even a documentary to the general public.

I enjoy his show as a better version of what the daily show used to be, comedy with a political slant. Looking at his arguments and rhetoric is interesting, and he raises a lot of good points, though is light on data and solutions. A lot of 1. Point out problem. 2. Drive home point with either anecdotes/studies to raise credibility 3. Acknowledge counter-argument and verbally acknowledge difficulty of solution, But we need to do SOMETHING, not acknowledging that something may make things either better or worse.

Looking at his segments that touch on medicine
1. Pharma paying doctors: thought this was mostly fair, pointed out abuses that all of us know about without blaming all docs.
2. Medicare for all: Did a good job laying into problems with the current system and the basic pros/cons of it, but didn't dive into the weeds of how huge/traumatic an upheaval it would be to our economy, even if you agree with the final result
3. Compounding pharmacies: eew. Actually was quite eye opening, though I'm sure was focused on bad actors, but did show how its' largely unregulated and can be ripe for abuse
4. Bias in medicine: Actually thought he did a pretty good job staying away from "doctors are all racist/sexist" and instead focused on historical facts that color medicine today including understudying female issues, pregnant women, underrepresentation of minorities in trials, etc. . But he fell into the same trap that most studies do, quoting facts that minorities/women are X% less likely to get treatment Y or have outcome Z and taking those results at face value, not diving into the fact that unequal outcomes doesn't mean people are being treated poorly but are rather complex outcomes including a variety of inputs beyond race/gender.
 
I wonder if Drew would go on record for doctors being able to do "remote SBRT" literally from anywhere (like the beach?) which it seems that's partly what a3i is for

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I am sure Ron D will tell us that you can bill for real time adaptive plan from anywhere but need to be in the building for cbct.
 
Wallernus, let me ... no, no, listen, ok, no, let me stop you right there, ok, Wallnerus. we work 5 days a week here, ok? Got it? 5 DAYS.

- Clinic admin who spreads out 10 patients on beam over a 9 hour day to make sure therapists can't leave early.
Aren’t most therapists paid by hour?
We have opposite problem. Admin trying to get done as early as possible so all hourly employees get paid less….then they quit 🙁
 
Wallernus, let me ... no, no, listen, ok, no, let me stop you right there, ok, Wallnerus. we work 5 days a week here, ok? Got it? 5 DAYS.

- Clinic admin who spreads out 10 patients on beam over a 9 hour day to make sure therapists can't leave early.
Interesting

Would think if hourly, they wouldn’t do that

When we do this, it’s on behalf of RTTS so they don’t drop below full time
 
This is my issue. Keep getting told I should compress the treatment schedule more so they don't have to pay the hourly workers
In this environment that's asking to lose therapists and have them to move somewhere else for more. Locums market for them probably even better than it has been for us now with the recent bounce
 
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