Doctors, nurses fighting COVID-19 are having pay and benefits cut as their employers lose revenue
April 5, 2020
Due to the Coronavirus epidemic and the downturn of reasonable reimbursement under the circumstances, it has become apparent that the business of medicine, as reflected by hospitals and insurance companies, has been pulling in the reins. There have been recent articles about reducing salaries to physicians and nurses who are employed by the entity. This is unheard of. These people are saving lives and risking their own lives. The first salaries that should even be affected are the board members and the administration of the hospitals and insurance companies. This is reflective in the messages I have put out for the last three or four years, and the fact the more work the doctors do, the more they justify their salaries, but obviously the opposite is now true; the less work they do, the more they are docked 20 or 30% of their pay. The control of medical care used to be with a gatekeeper of medical care, the physician. Now that they are owned by the institutions they work for, they can be dictated to. The sad part is, the doctor still is the professional caregiver despite where his income comes from, and he is the sole purveyor. This should be respected and not maligned nor restricted. Any payment differential that comes from an administrator should be mitigated by that administrator’s salary and any other non-medical person within the institution that is employing that physician.
See video: https://youtu.be/mtBMxy-8Ooc
This pandemic is not over yet, and there are doctors and nurses risking their lives to save people who have the virus. The people who are literally working in the trenches have no personal protective equipment or PPE’s. The business of medicine has streamlined its profitability by eliminating an extra amount of personal protection equipment and ventilators, which has become clear on most TV channels and there is a rush. Years ago, this would not have been a problem because the appropriateness of medical care by the hospital and insurance company would take great care to have a depth of medical equipment to respond to a pandemic. It is very similar to an emergency room where the employment administrator comes to and finds everyone standing around on a Saturday morning at 8:00 a.m., saying that there are too many people here and we don’t need that, then fires all of them. The problem is, when a bus turns over Saturday night or Sunday night, you will need those people; it is not 100% workable under their auspices of FTE’s.
In other words, the medical profession has been usurped by the business of medicine, which I have said all along, and they are compromising the efficiency of the truly compassionate professionals who are saving lives every day and every hour. I state again, the administrators should fork over their salaries, as well as every insurance company, to support these brave medical professionals and nurses so they can do their job and not have this hang over their head, as far as monetary issues. All doctors will work professionally above and beyond what they are capable of doing, and they should not be restrained by any monetary threats or distractions during the course of their duties. This may go on for four to six months, the way I see it, but it is really clarifying the major issues of an overly efficient financial system for profit running our medical care today. It is a big problem and it will just get worse.
