This Peter Orszag tool wants doctors to work weekends

[naus]

And do elective surgery on Saturdays.

Apparently doctors don't work on weekends. Newsflash to me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/opinion/04orszag.html?src=me&ref=general

Obama's former director of the White House Office of Management and Budget:

Doctors, like most people, don’t love to work weekends, and they probably don’t enjoy being evaluated against their peers. But their industry can no longer afford to protect them from the inevitable. Imagine a drugstore open only five days a week, or a television network that didn’t measure its ratings. Improving the quality of health care and reducing its cost will require that doctors make many changes — but working weekends and consenting to quality management are two clear ones.

It’s not just a safety issue but, for less life-threatening medical problems, also a matter of convenience. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to schedule your elective surgery on a Saturday if you wanted? Most hospitals don’t offer that option.

Good luck getting the nursing unions to agree to that.

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[Encephalectomy]

'Improving the quality of health care and reducing its cost will require that doctors make many changes — but working weekends and consenting to quality management are two clear ones.'

LOL at this part. I can't believe he would write this tripe. Somehow having more medical procedures done and more care provided is going to lower costs

 

[geogil]

And do elective surgery on Saturdays.

Apparently doctors don't work on weekends. Newsflash to me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/opinion/04orszag.html?src=me&ref=general

Obama's former director of the White House Office of Management and Budget:


Good luck getting the nursing unions to agree to that.

Huh. I must not have been rounding with an attending on the weekends then. It must have been one of those industrious midlevels. I bet doctors don't like working at night either. We should schedule more elective 2 am total knees. There are literally dozens of hours during the week that most people are asleep, lying in their beds, squandering potential hours of productivity.

 

[naus]

This is what happens when all the people managing health care reform are desk jockeys like Orszag (who's never worked a day outside the government's tit) and trial lawyers like Kathleen Sebelius (current Director of Human Health Services, she was the former director of the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association).

It's pathetic.

The only thing these bunch of *****s are good at is bashing doctors. Budget overrun? Bash doctors. No quality improvement for the morbidly obese patient? Bash doctors. They've succeeded in making the public think that when we're not killing people during our 36 hour workweeks, we're all on the golf course sipping martinis and pocketing six-figure pensions. Maybe they just got the doctors confused for the cops.

 

[naus]

The bastard probably ran out of sick days and decided to take his vengeance on the doctors.

Entitled Philip Exeter alumni prick.

 

[dynx]

And do elective surgery on Saturdays.

Apparently doctors don't work on weekends. Newsflash to me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/opinion/04orszag.html?src=me&ref=general

Obama's former director of the White House Office of Management and Budget:


Good luck getting the nursing unions to agree to that.

This is rich. You got to hand it to these people though they certainly have the public sold.

Try scheduling an elective case on a weekend. Our attendings would love too. Good luck getting a scrub teck and circulating nurse in the hospital above the minimum number of rooms we need to keep open for emergencies. that's the LEAST of your troubles when you add the recovery nurses for the PACU. Extra admit people. Everyone BUT the doc's will(do) throw a fit.

 

[dpmd]

The guy is an idiot. Every example he used in the article involves ancillary staff, not doctors, being less than available (in every single facility I have been at). And he acts like running the OR round the clock is going to be some huge cost savings because then it will be running at "full capacity". Umm, it isn't a factory machine where starting it and stopping it involves a lot of effort, but once it is going there is minimal maintenence. Every case you run requires someone to pull the supplies (which someone needs to keep replenished and order as needed), set the room up, see the patient, provide anesthesia services, scrub the case, circulate, break the room down, clean the room, clean the reusable supplies, recover the patient. All of that just so the surgeon can come in, operate, and leave (or fill in on some of the above roles, depending on how well the facility takes care of business). But by all means let's blame the doctors for not working to "full capacity".

 

[Slack3r]

The guy is an idiot. Every example he used in the article involves ancillary staff, not doctors, being less than available (in every single facility I have been at). And he acts like running the OR round the clock is going to be some huge cost savings because then it will be running at "full capacity". Umm, it isn't a factory machine where starting it and stopping it involves a lot of effort, but once it is going there is minimal maintenence. Every case you run requires someone to pull the supplies (which someone needs to keep replenished and order as needed), set the room up, see the patient, provide anesthesia services, scrub the case, circulate, break the room down, clean the room, clean the reusable supplies, recover the patient. All of that just so the surgeon can come in, operate, and leave (or fill in on some of the above roles, depending on how well the facility takes care of business). But by all means let's blame the doctors for not working to "full capacity".

Let's get a slow clap going for Obama and Co. Hope! Change!

 

[45408]

Like I said in pre-allo, physicians are available every day, every night, every weekend, and every holiday of the year. This guy is a complete idiot.

 

[JaggerPlate]

Let's get a slow clap going for Obama and Co. Hope! Change!

Yes we CAN! Yes we CAN! I just can't praise this son of a bitch enough.