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Originally Posted by Eg_cruz
So are you stating that doctors do not get paid for writing prescriptions? My doctor client in Ocala makes $100k for his writing ability.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by golfing eagles
Actually, I find that whopper not only insulting to the profession, but personally as well. The behavior that post alleges is not only unethical, it is criminal and would result in severe penalties. I hope your "physician client", whatever that means, reads this and knows who you are.
Any other physicians on this site outraged by this? Have any of you ever been "paid to write prescriptions"? To the tune of 100K????
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I was never paid to write a script. However, I was asked to be on an advisory committee for a vaccine company which met twice a year at rotating expensive restaurants to discuss advances in vaccines and also to look at various ads that were to be placed in journals and advise on whether we felt they were effective, honest, eye catching etc. We were also asked about packaging, ordering issues etc.
On the other hand, I was offered potentially thousands a year for NOT prescribing which could risk the health of my patients. One of the hundreds of insurance companies with which we had a contract was capitated. That means instead of being paid for service given, we were paid a fixed amount per month for every person who selected our practice for their care.
I don't recall the numbers, but for example, we'd be contracted to receive 30/month per patient no matter how often we saw them. And they'd put aside 10/mo for paying specialists to whom we referred our patients, and 10/mo for drugs we'd write, and 10/mo for hospital/ER costs, thus spending 60/mo on each patient. Of course they got paid more than 60/mo to provide this coverage.
But then we were told that if we stayed under the amounts set aside for drugs, specialists, hospitals etc we would get 1/2 of it as a year end bonus if the insurance company made money. And we were provided a list of medications they were specifically watching due to high costs. We got a quarterly report on how we were doing. How many antibiotics we wrote, and were they inexpensive generics like amoxicillin or high price drugs like cephalosporins.
Our group did a lot of ADHD management, and all those drugs were on the don't write list other than short acting amphetamines. I don't believe our doctors changed anything in what they used based on this "incentive" But the carrot was waved in our face by the insurance industry. Put your own economic benefit into your calculation of what, if any, meds to write.
If the reader is interested in capitated health care, it still exists, and how it pays the doctor more for making the insurance company more profitable..
READ THIS
One place where capitation is the payment method is
The Villages Health.
Many studies have documented that the opioid companies gave sometimes enormous amounts of money to doctors who were high writers. It was not that they said, write 10 scripts and we'll give you money. Instead they paid high writers to be speakers at dinners or at conventions etc.
Here is one sentence from the Harvard paper, just looking at 2 years of data:
"The study found that, in 2014 and 2015, opioid manufacturers paid
hundreds of doctors sums in the six figures, while thousands more were paid over $25,000."
Funny how that sentence from Harvard says doctors were paid over 100,000 to write opioids, just like the poster wrote that got you outraged. It was not illegal, there were no severe penalties, and whether it is ethical depends on whether the doctors wrote more to get more money or the drug companies picked doctors who were already high users and the payment had no impact [unlikely to have NO impact]