{"id":4420,"date":"2010-11-05T11:39:16","date_gmt":"2010-11-05T15:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?p=4420"},"modified":"2011-07-19T17:45:24","modified_gmt":"2011-07-19T21:45:24","slug":"independent-doctors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2010\/11\/05\/independent-doctors\/","title":{"rendered":"Independent doctors?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>John Mandrola is a cardiac electrophysiologist and blogger on matters medical and general. Here is a recent post from his blog <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/drjohnm.blogspot.com\/\"><em>Dr John M<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In response to my story on how physician consolidation and hospital ownership of doctors is affecting patient referral patterns, I received an email with this attached PDF file. \u00a0(Smudges mine)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2010\/11\/Mandrola-pdf.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2010\/11\/Mandrola-pdf1.jpg\"><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2010\/11\/Mandrola-pdf2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-4426\" title=\"Mandrola pdf\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2010\/11\/Mandrola-pdf2-300x249.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"249\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It is from a cardiac surgeon who doggedly chooses to remain independent. This document appears on his website and also ran in the local newspaper as an advertisement.<\/p>\n<p>Hopefully, the employer of your doctor has also employed the &#8216;best&#8217; specialists.<\/p>\n<p>(The trouble is that in the eyes of some policy-makers and employers \u2014 perhaps the same ones that refer to doctors as &#8220;providers&#8221;\u2014 there is a belief that all cardiologists, or surgeons, or (insert any specialty) are interchangeable. \u00a0And yes, if you look at doctors on spreadsheets of CPT codes and wRVUs, this would be true, but at the bedside, in the operating room, or in the EP lab whilst we use our varying degrees of skills, training, and experience, doctors differ vastly.)<\/p>\n<p>Sorry, you all already knew that. \u00a0It would be common sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Mandrola is a cardiac electrophysiologist and blogger on matters medical and general. Here is a recent post from his blog Dr John M. In response to my story on how physician consolidation and hospital ownership of doctors is affecting patient referral patterns, I received an email with this attached PDF file. \u00a0(Smudges mine) It [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":655,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,1],"tags":[529,530],"class_list":["post-4420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cardiac-surgery","category-general","tag-patient-rights","tag-referral-practices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/655"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}