Opinion
Salary differences in medicine do not always jibe with value, risk or training
LETTER — Posted June 15, 2009
Regarding "Is goal more quality or less payment?" (Letters, May 18): The author of the letter cited suggests that payments to primary care should not be increased at the expense of the specialists. I would disagree. I know it's a revolutionary and heretical thought, but there are some of us in medicine who make a lot of money. We have to realize as a profession, that the pool of money for physicians is in fact finite.
As a disclaimer, I am a nonprocedural subspecialist, an endocrinologist who focuses on management of diabetes and preventive care. As such, I save the system enormous amounts of money by preventing complications and hospitalization, a service for which I am not reimbursed. I am not averse to the concept that those who take greater risk and have more years of training should be fairly compensated for that.
However, at the same time, the disparities in salaries between the specialties of medicine have in general very little proportional relationship to true differences in value, risk or training.
Until we recognize that we are part of the problem, the solution to fairly reimbursing primary care physicians (the only solution to the shortage thereof) will not be forthcoming.
Jennifer Hone, MD, Santa Barbara, Calif.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2009/06/15/edlt0615.htm.
