Editor’s note: This response was edited lightly for brevity and clarity.
Dr. Harry Severance: For physicians to leverage any sellers’ market power in the healthcare industry, they must do at least the following:
- They need to put aside individual or specialty differences and unite on major commonly shared issues.
- They need to develop a unified, national negotiating structure organization (union or otherwise) that can force management to the bargaining table to make improvements within healthcare workplaces and protect and benefit patient outcomes.
- They need to take back their decision-making positions within healthcare management and hospital structures. For physicians to re-become captains of their own fates they must develop business savvy (not bequeath it to management). The old and current pathway of “I’ll just see the patients and you manage the store” has brought healthcare to the precipice on which it now sits. The true answer will still be an amalgam, but with more equitable divisions! It is clear that management at the highest level needs those who are clinically active to have a seat at the table if we want our healthcare system to survive.
- Finally, Congress must be pressed to better modify the Stark and anti-kickback laws that prevent clinically practicing physicians from running hospitals!
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