Monday, February 04, 2008

Endo shortage

Today I came across this interesting article about the shortage of endocrinologists in the US. Conspicuously absent is the reason for the shortage - compensation.

5 comments:

Beth said...

Compensation? How so? Internal med docs make plenty of money.

Maybe they should get some sort of "signing bonus" for choosing to be an endo!

Lili said...

Endocrinologists don't make enough money. Those who are conscientious and actually care about their patients literally end up going bankrupt. The problem is that things like treating a complication are compensated highly by Medicare, but ongoing and preventative care are not. In the case of diabetes, things like education aren't covered at all by many insurance companies. So consequently, fewer people go into endocrinology.

Beth said...

Hmm. My dad's endo buddies make lots of money! He's also having trouble finding any gastros to fill the empty slots in his practice, but his take on it is mostly population density... the baby boomers are retiring / needing lots of medicat care and the less glamorous fields of medicine are feeling that shortage more that things like neurosurgery or pediatrics.

Maybe the financials are for big cities?

Kevin L. McMahon said...

'Endo' is misleading since this includes the highly compensated world of human growth hormone ;) Diabetes is one of the least 'medical' of all specialties and has more to do with behavior than prescribed regimen (dosing). It's also said that a diabetes visit properly done takes 5 times as long as a non-diabetic visit and carries no additional revenue with it. There is also no compensation for all of those phone calls between visits. There are many people working on changing this but it will take some time before diabetes specialists are compensated on par with their specialist peers.

Lili said...

Thanks, Kevin.