Why not PRIVATIZE residency programs?

[zut212]

I don't know if this idea of mine belongs here, but I would like to share with you my idea of residency programs.

As a preface to all of this, the residency program has about 100,000 positions in total, and this number is set by congress. The residents are paid a stipend by the government of about $50K/year for 80 hours of work a week.

This is a GREAT DEAL for society to have MDs do this much work at a low cost. Why can't MDs who are in private practice bring on newly-graduated MDs to work for them at their practice, and pay these MDs a market-determined salary?

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[seelee]

I don't know if this idea of mine belongs here, but I would like to share with you my idea of residency programs.

As a preface to all of this, the residency program has about 100,000 positions in total, and this number is set by congress. The residents are paid a stipend by the government of about $50K/year for 80 hours of work a week.

This is a GREAT DEAL for society to have MDs do this much work at a low cost. Why can't MDs who are in private practice bring on newly-graduated MDs to work for them at their practice, and pay these MDs a market-determined salary?

The government doesn't pay 50K, it is more like 100K. Half of that is kept by the residency program.

The unfortunate fact is that virtually every single aspect of our health care has become wholly dependent on government funding to the extent that people are convinced that things like health care, education, retirement, etc can't exist without it.

 

[Dr McSexy]

This is a GREAT DEAL for society to have MDs do this much work at a low cost. Why can't MDs who are in private practice bring on newly-graduated MDs to work for them at their practice, and pay these MDs a market-determined salary?

What would be the point?

So you want private-practices to take the time to train, risks of training, risks to their reputation and to also split their profits. Not to mention the extra work to make sure they were accredited in training.

Why would any private practice want to do this?

I guess the only way I see it happening is if somehow having these new graduates increases the profitability of their practice by so much that it's worth all of the above.

 

[seelee]

What would be the point?

So you want private-practices to take the time to train, risks of training, risks to their reputation and to also split their profits. Not to mention the extra work to make sure they were accredited in training.

Why would any private practice want to do this?

I guess the only way I see it happening is if somehow having these new graduates increases the profitability of their practice by so much that it's worth all of the above.

The point would be to reduce the health care cost to the government. But you are right, something like this would require a colossal paradigm shift in how we train medical professionals. It is an interesting idea, but I wouldn't expect it to happen anytime soon.

 

[Smurfette]

This wouldn't work for a variety of reasons. First of all, the private physician would have no incentive to hire someone who has to learn all there is to learn in 3+ years; they would slow them down and decrease productivity, as well as require constant supervision. Couple that with having the resident's salary added to the overhead would make it completely unfeasible; also, this would make resident salaries go down, not up.

Residents rotate through different specialties and need to be exposed to a lot of variety, especially as training is shifting increasingly towards subspecialization. How will a general surgery resident get burn/vascular/CT/transplant/peds experience if most general surgeons do not do these procedures in large enough volume? The same extends to IM or Peds subspecialties or anesthesia, to name a few.