USA Today practically calls all ophthalmologists quacks.

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The tone of the article was that doctors are bad for prescribing drugs in an off label manner.

I would estimate that 100%, not 99%, of all ophthalmologists who do cataract surgery do it. Inferring that these physicians, most of whom are extremely skilled and proficient, are practicing bad medicine by using drugs off-label is deceptive and wrong.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-05-08-offlabel-drugs_x.htm

Use of Pred Forte and use of fluoroquinolones for cataract surgery are both off-label uses. Try omitting them and that's not good. Antibiotics are often labelled only for use with bacterial conjunctivitis.

The article's conclusion is not surprising. One of the reasons that reimbursement is going down is because informed people think cataract reimbursement is more than adequate and disregards office expenses, malpractice, etc.. One patient said $500 is plenty and half that amount is more than enough.

 

[VA Hopeful Dr]

The article's conclusion is not surprising. One of the reasons that reimbursement is going down is because informed people think cataract reimbursement is more than adequate and disregards office expenses, malpractice, etc.. One patient said $500 is plenty and half that amount is more than enough.

I'd like to take every patient that complain about how expensive a doctor's time is and put them through a month of med school... you know, just enough to get a full test cycle in. Then a session of IM wards.

That'd stop that backtalk mighty quick.

 

[odieoh]

Was there a second page to this article that I didn't see? They never even mentioned ophthalmologists. In the table on the side they had Ciloxan listed as one of the meds commonly used off label. . . I think thats a far cry from "practically calling all ophthalmologists quacks." In general it didn't even really seem to be condemning off label use of drugs at all--it just said that a lot of times meds are used in ways "that lack scientific evidence," but then quickly conceded that a) sometimes it just looks like off label use in complicated cases where the docs weren't reporting all the medical problems, and b) Sometimes there is adequate evidence, but no drug company wants to do an FDA trial on the generic drugs to approve new uses for a drug they will not have a monopoly on.

You could probably do really well writing headlines for the Inquirer or the Weekly World News. Go Batboy!!