Is medicine a profession or a business?

To read this on my blog site, click on the title above. – There are links there to other blogs and ways to do searches that aren’t evident when you receive this as an email.

I have been thinking about writing a blog like this for some time. So first let me make some disclosures: ONE: I am generally a “liberal” and would favor a single payor health care system. TWO: I grew up in a small town in Nebraska where the local doctors were beloved, cared for the families in our town, and drove Buicks (BMWs, Teslas, Lexi, etc. were unknown – the two bankers drove Cadillacs) THREE: Medicine was much less complex, much cheaper, and much less effective. FOUR: I have had a wonderful career in academics where I received a paycheck from the State of Colorado and was usually required to earn >90% of my salary through grants or clinical earnings – I could talk more about “tenure” if anyone is interested. Academic salaries are generally less than private practice, but the advantages of no/minimal night call and working with residents and students and exploring new treatments in the lab and clinic are great rewards that can’t be measured in dollar terms.

With that out of the way, I remain saddened by what has happened to my profession. For all kinds of reasons, many physicians now consider themselves as much “small businessmen” as they do physicians. As the business of medicine has become more and more complex, they provide jobs for increasing numbers of staff, pay higher malpractice premiums than they used to, and look for ways increase their incomes. But few if any are missing any meals, and many are privileged to be in the top 1% of wage earners. Nothing wrong with that.

BUT… This week’s New England Journal article exposes a very disturbing issue that I happen to know a lot about. Some urologists, who only a decade ago were constantly arguing with their radiation therapy counterparts on how much better surgery is for treating prostate cancer, have been buying radiation therapy equipment and hiring “their own” radiation oncologist to run the equipment, then self-referring. The reason is obvious and it has nothing to do with what is best for patients. It is to increase their already very substantial incomes, which (to be fair) have been decreased somewhat by lesser reimbursement for surgery, less for giving lupron, and no doubt other cuts. The outcome of radiation and surgery treatment in terms of cure is the same. The side effects are somewhat different and deserving of discussion with each man who chooses treatment. The figure shows the magnitude of this trend.

There are many examples of similar trends when doctors stand to make money by ordering tests, buying their own equipment, setting up their own “surgicenters”, or in my own subspecialty, giving one chemotherapy that has a higher reimbursement than another that is equally efficacious. Other articles have dealt with how hospitals maximize their profits with the “chargemaster”. And still others have dealt with the practice of pharmaceutical companies charging huge amounts for novel drugs – expensive to develop for sure, but also hugely profitable.

So the answer to my question seems to be that medicine is both a profession and a business. My view is that the patient should always come first, not the pursuit of profit. Thus there is a built-in conflict if the goal of business is to make as much money as possible. Herein lies the challenge for our health care system. I don’t have any idea if the ACA will help, but I do know that the current system is in dire need of reform, and that the entering medical students who say they want to be doctors “because they love science and love people” will have a long ways to go in realizing that dream if there aren’t changes.