What's your experience with charging for "no-shows?"'

I keep getting hammered with no shows. Our practice does not charge for no-shows, but calls our patients the day before, leaves VMs if they don't answer, and sends email and text reminders to our patients. Still so many just don't show up.

If we started asking for a card on file when they make an appointment, and then charge if they no-call, no-show, will that help? I think it will decrease no-shows, but my supervisors think it will drive patients away, to which I reply "That's fine, let the competitions' offices fill up with patients that don't show up!"

But, I'm worried just asking for card info up front will drive away patients.

Also to know, I'm a newer Allergist/Immunologist and looking for more new patients. I'm not a bursting PCP's office with a 2-3 months wait to get in.

Current resident thinking about taking my first job abroad. A few questions for those that have done it in the past or are still abroad:

• What country did you take a job in?
• How long did you stay abroad?
• Are you happy with your decision?
• Do you feel the decision was worth the pay cut?

I was wondering if there were any doctors here from Florida and what they thought about the current abortion law in Florida, and the abortion amendment 4 that we will be voting on.

You always hear about the pro-choice/pro-life arguments- such as doctors are afraid to Perform abortion procedures because not knowing the law simply says like doctor can perform abortion if women’s life is at risk, but the risk isn’t defined. So, that’s one of the reasons people want amendment 4 passed, and also to allow for a less strict abortion law (I believe?¿) then the pro-life say this amendment is too extreme, and will allow for late term abortion, and not require a doctor to approve the abortion - just any healthcare provider which could be just a staff member at a clinic.

I am not very good with politics/law nor with medical world. But i just wanted to see it from the point of view of a doctor since ads never seem to include that

Thanks!

Whoever at Epic responsible for the Haiku update that provides realtime alerts for every patient who shows up for an office visit is a moron🤬My phone was dinging all morning. Alert fatigue is real.

I am an assistant to a holistic doctor and I really enjoy it. I am looking to branch out and work with more doctors and want to understand what doctors need help with. What do you find most overwhelming about running your own practice? What tasks would you like to offload to someone else? I appreciate your input!

Been practicing for 20 years

Posted in the r/Residency subreddit but no traction; but I’m really curious.

Based on the latest episode of diary of a ceo. Any merit to the theory ?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8467939/

I have countless friends writing their MCATs and trying to get into medical school, as well as a few nearing the end of their residencies and getting staff positions. It's a weird feeling seeing so many people busting their asses trying to get a spot while having watched others go through the entire training process... just to be a shell of who they were and deeply unhappy. As someone who is considering a career in medicine as well, I'm asking: are (you or) any physicians you know genuinely happy with the route they chose or would you choose differently if given the chance to enter a different career/field?

How difficult is it for medical graduates to clear the USMLE in English who have done their whole MBBS in the German language? What is the difficulty level?

So my colleagues and I have recently been discussing the disparities currently present within the surgical training environment. For example, some trainees are unable to practice some procedures regularly due to safety concerns for patients as well as limited opportunities available. One way we can tackle this issue is by implementing VR training into our programs to not only allow patient safety, but also consistently personalised training modules. As a surgeon, what procedures do you think you would benefit the most from by training using VR environments provided that you get adequate haptic feedback to make this training more realistic? I appreciate everyone’s insights, I do strongly believe that by opening these communication channels we can work together to improve surgical training and inevitably patient outcomes in the future.

I was shadowing a doctor at a clinic today. I didn't really realize how much of doctors time is used for doing admin stuff. How do you guys manage it?

Hello, I am a junior doctor from the UK wanting to make a video about the difference in salaries for junior doctors between different countries (mainly UK, US, CA, AUS)

If you don't mind sharing - completely anon of course

Could you reply to this post with the follow details

Country:

Region/State/Area:

Post Graduate Year:

Currently Specialty (specify if this a training programme, if so how many years into said training programme):

Current Average Hours Per week:

How many approximate weekends and nights per month:

Total Salary:

How much student loan did you graduate with?:

bonus -> do you feel you are fairly compensated for your work:

I am a UK F2 doctor set on going to work in Melbourne, Australia and am looking for some advice. I know that I am eligible as an IMG via the competent authority pathway. The thing is most of the jobs in Victoria now have PMCV matching. The PMCV match eligibility requires Australian permanent residency/citizenship for the competent authority pathway route (pictured below). Is anyone else applying to jobs in Victoria dealing with this/does anyone have advice on how UK IMGs are supposed to get jobs in Victoria?

https://preview.redd.it/750brc2qxkld1.png?width=1074&format=png&auto=webp&s=58288ecc79fd9e89624bb5336736aa2c94589eb1

https://preview.redd.it/tc3cuyooxkld1.png?width=1065&format=png&auto=webp&s=c117acdb8f9c76cc4fd1e51c694f6ec4f155a09c

So, I'm working on the concept for a book. If you think it might be fun to speculate about a fictional situation, then this post is for you.

I wanted to know from the perspective of a medical professional, Lets say a guy is catapulted back in time. He discovers a village that is being ravaged by what he thinks is malaria (It is my understanding that only lab tests can confirm this 100%, but if there is a way to know that would be great for the story). Whether its malaria or not , whatever the disease is it nearly always fatal. Anyway luckily there are also some cinchona trees around. He has access to distilled ethanol, so he can extract a bunch of the quinine containing alkaloids from the bark (along with a bunch of other junk presumably). There are about 50 sick people, and he does not have much time, for malaria reasons and for plot reasons. What do you think is the most responsible way for this fictional person to determine the dosing of the extract? Is it just a pure shot in the dark, trial and error, or is there a smarter way to go about this? Also to be clear, he has no idea what dosages are/were used for treatment using pure quinine compounds, nor does he know what dosages of bark and wine the romans used. All he has is some stuff he half remembers from Wikipedia about quinine from cinchona bark being used to treat malaria, So the solution has to be something that he can determine himself (or I guess healthy villagers can assist by observing patients too).

Well, I hope at least a couple of you think this is fun to think about. thank you.

Hello! 

I am about to start my first year as a med student. Nobody in my family is a doctor but medicine has always seemed very interesting to me. I think this is also a job I would enjoy. I live in central Europe, this might be important.

The plan right now is to study a lot and get past the first couple hard years, then study more and become a surgeon. The surgeon part will probably change, it is just that people around me have told me that pursuing this path is a good idea. I also remember enjoying dissecting mice in biology class so I am sticking with this for a while, just so I have something to follow. 

The problem is that everybody I have talked to - friends, family, fellow students or even complete strangers (doctors in hospitals and such) have told me that life as a doctor is hard, that they are overworked, unhappy and depressed. I have been told that being a doctor does not really pay well and it's basically a lot of hard work for nothing. And that the only way to be a happy doctor is to get your degree and do something else. 

As you can imagine, I don't want this all to be true. Being very young and naive, I really want to have a huge goal which I can pursue. When you are a child you chase good grades. When you grow older you chase a good education, a good school, a good profession. Right now, I feel like I don't really know what it is I should be chasing. I need ideas and insight more than anything I guess. 

So I want to ask you this:

Can you please, think of and type out a hypothetical ideal scenario of what a perfect life as a doctor might be? 

What do very successful doctors you know do and how did  they manage to have a good life?

I know “perfect” is very abstract. If you need a definition, let it be something simple as having a lot of money and time. 

What fields might be enjoyable/profitable? What people should I try to find and build professional relationships with? What types of jobs should I do as a student? Should I focus on finding interesting competitions? Should I look into starting a business? What would you do if you could go back in time to where you were in your first year?

Since this is something I like, I don't mind working a lot. The thing is that I just want to have free time to spend with friends and family. The money part is not that important but having more money than you need can't really be a bad thing, there is always something to do with it. 

English is not my first language, I would gladly explain anything that you didn't understand from what I have said.

Thank you

So, I'm in the pain clinic, minding my own business, when this poor bastard shuffles in. Forty-eight years old, 5'4", and hauling around 174 pounds of pure, unadulterated herpes-riddled suffering. His left side's a goddamn battlefield—blisters everywhere, like some twisted science experiment gone wrong at the T6 level. And the pain? Jesus, the pain. The guy's clocking in at a solid 5 to 7 out of 10. Not the kind of pain you just sleep off with a couple of ibuprofen, but the "somebody get this shit off me before I lose my mind" kind.

Now, this isn’t his first go-round with the needle brigade. We’ve already played this game with him before—stuck him with some spinal blocks for his jacked-up back and threw in a knee block for good measure. He handled that lidocaine like a champ, no drama, no complaints. The guy’s like a walking dartboard at this point, but hey, no one said life was fair.

So, we decide we’re going to hit him with an ESPB—an erector spinae plane block, for those of you keeping track at home. What that really means is we’re about to stick a needle deep into his back and hope we don’t fuck it up. He’s not on any weird drugs, no coke, no psychedelics. Mentally stable, according to the records—not that it would matter in this clinic of horrors.

We lay him out on his stomach, scrub him down like we’re about to perform open-heart surgery, and then in goes the 22-gauge needle. Ultrasound guiding us the whole way because I’m not about to go in blind and turn this guy into a vegetable. We start slow—5 mL at a time, because why not stretch out the agony, right? Every 3 seconds, we push in more of that sweet, sweet lidocaine. His muscles start separating from the bone just like they’re supposed to. So far, so good.

But then, not two minutes later, this guy starts laughing. Not a chuckle, not a polite little laugh—no, this guy’s losing his shit. Slurred speech, like he’s had one too many drinks at happy hour, and he’s sitting there telling us, in his best drunk voice, that he’s never felt better in his life. And here I am, looking at his vitals, expecting him to flatline at any second. But nope—everything’s fine. Heart’s still beating, oxygen’s where it should be, nothing’s going wrong. He’s just high as a fucking kite off lidocaine, living in some kind of blissful wonderland while I stand there scratching my head.

Thirty-five minutes later, he snaps out of it. The slurring stops, the giggling fades, and now he’s all business again, like nothing happened. Meanwhile, I’m trying to process what the hell just went down. And the pain? Gone. Dropped from a raging 7 down to a 1, maybe a 2, and stayed that way for a couple of hours. He’s not just pain-free—he’s goddamn euphoric. Tells me it’s the happiest he’s ever been, like I’m some kind of wizard who just gave him the key to the universe.

Two hours later, we cut him loose. He walks out of here like he just found Jesus, high on life and probably wondering when he can come back for round two. And me? I’m left staring at my hands, wondering what kind of dark magic I just pulled off.

What's the best professional networking tool do you use?