As bad as everything seems right now in medicine, it will only continue to get worse. It very well may be that in 5 to 10 years from now we will be lamenting on how much worse things have gotten over the past number of years.
Here are some predictions for the future:
About 70% of physicians are employed by health systems right now, that number may approach 90% or above. More hospitals will have conglomerated so that in most cities in the US, you will have only a choice between one of two health systems, which will both equally be bad.
While hospital systems are buying up primary care practices, private equity will continue to buy up the remaining specialty practices. These will start as good deals, but once the wolf is in the hen house things will change. Physicians will find themselves working harder than ever before, delivering lower quality of care, and making less money at the hands of private equity companies which care only about money.
Once the wolf is in the hen house things will change. Physicians will find themselves working harder than ever before, delivering lower quality of care, and making less money. Click To Tweet
All of the above factors will lead to loss of autonomy for the physician, which inevitably is replaced by commoditization.
This means more patients, more charting, more surgeries, and lower quality of care. Physicians will be pushed to the brink, and the “burnout” rate will skyrocket.
There will be news articles questioning why all of our physicians are burning out, even though the answer is obvious.
More and more will be spent on healthcare, the care will get worse, and will be much more expensive.
This is the future.
If you are a provider and don’t want to live this inevitable nightmare, you need to stop taking insurance and stop working with hospital systems. This is the road out of hell.
