Recent medical news has focused on the need to recruit more health care workers because of the departure of many from the field. Although the COVID-19 pandemic certainly added stress to the work, there were difficulties that preceded the pandemic.
When I began practicing pediatrics about 40 years ago, the ratio of help needed to support me was 3:1 – or essentially nursing, secretarial and billing positions. Now the ratio is 16:1. That’s a lot of salaries for one provider to support, despite some being new and essential, such as an IT person. However, the offloading of some tasks of past smaller practices has been replaced by other burdens.
Primary care has historically been the most poorly reimbursed of medical fields. Now these are often the empty positions. I found it shameful that insurance would reimburse more for procedures as minor as freezing warts than for an hour spent resuscitating a newborn or counseling a suicidal teen.
