Do you think the Medical Profession had taken a nosedive in quality over the past 10 years?

Question

It's gotten so bad in FL that I think most of these Dr's got their licences in a third world country, and have no business practicing medicine on people!

Answer 1

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Answer 2

It will get worse - more people are leaving healthcare, due to the worsening conditions.

You get what you pay for - blame the intermeddling insurance companies.  Two years ago, the United Healthcare CEO received $1.2 BILLION in stock options.

Now aren't you surprised they won't pay for your meds?!?

Answer 3

This is an interesting question, actually.  I think there are several reasons why quality in medicine seems to be falling off.

1.  The type of practitioners providing primary care is changing.  Many nurse practitioners and physicians assistants are becoming the first contact for patients with problems, whether they be bronchitis or cancer, and often these are people who can't tell the difference due to insufficient training. (although there are very good NPs and PAs)

2.  There are too few doctors and too many patients.  The population is increasing and so is the amount of problems they are willing to go to the doctor for.  The medical education community responds by training more doctors and lowering the requirements to boost the numbers.  The doctors respond by seeing more and more patients during the day, devoting less and less time to each one.

3.  The insurance companies respond not to the supply/demand balance, but to the demand/demand imbalance by paying less and less for each patient, forcing the doctor to then see more patients to afford to have an office in which to see them.  Eventually, the doctor begins to resent any patient with real problems who requires real time.  (It actually becomes a real conflict of interest when treating 10 real patients will make you bankrupt and lead to an inability to treat the next 100 real patients.)

4.  The number of medications is increasing, along with the number of defined conditions to be diagnosed, meaning that there are more answers to find out after the fact and feel bad about missing.  It was easier to practice when all you needed to know was "pneumonia" and "high blood pressure."  Now you need to know "healthcare associated methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus pneumonia."

5.  Standards are high with patients who think they know medicine.  Anyone with access to the internet thinks they can diagnose their own medical problems and demand treatment, when in reality, even doctors should not be treating themselves due to the incredible bias involved.

Needless to say, I could go on and on.  Trust me, doctors are as frustrated as patients in today's medical world.  When you can get one insured patient an MRI to see why they see monkeys when they look at giraffes, but you can't get a blood test on someone without insurance who will probably die from cancer in a month.

My advice:  if you're not happy with your doctor, find another who you connect with.  Or find a nurse practitioner.  Or a physician's assistant.  Or an insurance company that will actually pay for your medical care.  : )

Answer 4

I think they practice more for the "money" than for the care of the patient.  I think the last of the dinosaurs of doctors that practiced because the actually cared about patients have just about died off.  The ones that are left practice out of greed and for the love of the almighty dollar. They practice for the wrong reasons and everything to is cover their a$$es.  I wonder if some of them even have the proper training and the proper licenses!!!