Most noteworthy physician quotes of 2016

In the annals of healthcare, the year 2016 surely will stand out. Among other developments, it’s when we learned how doctors will be paid under MACRA, the biggest Medicare payment reform in two decades. It’s when the scourge of opioid addiction grabbed headlines-and the attention of physicians. And as the year ended, real estate developer and reality TV star Donald Trump was promising to make repeal of Obamacare his first order of business after becoming president.

Read on for the top quotes of 2016 from the pages of Medical Economics. 

"Doctors live under the illusion that their patients are super-loyal and would never go anywhere else, but there’s not much data to show that’s true. It doesn’t take much to get somebody to move to another doctor when there is money involved."

John Meigs, Jr., MD
Family Physician
Centreville, Alabama

"We have reached a tipping point with affordability in the U.S. healthcare system. The shift to value-based care, and the incentives that go along with it, are driving health systems to take on more risk."

James Porter, MD
Chief Physician Executive
Deaconess Health System
Evansville, Indiana

"What tends to happen is that someone in authority says ‘we need measures’ and lots of measures are produced, but they haven’t been incorporated into a framework of how they will lead to improvement."

Eric Schneider, MD, MSc
Senior Vice President
The Commonwealth Fund

"If you put in a system that dings doctors for low scores on patient satisfaction or efficiency measures, but the problem lies in the variation of the patient population, you’ve done exactly the wrong thing."

Donald Berwick, MD
Former Acting Administrator
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

"I feel with virtual absolute certainty that the practice of defensive medicine will not go away unless and until there are major changes to our medical legal system."

Richard Anderson, MD, FACP
Chief Executive Officer
The Doctors Company

"I think there hasn’t been enough attention paid to how easy it is to become dependent on opioids. As a physician you naturally want to alleviate pain, so if you’re not sure how long the patient will require severe analgesic control you’re going to err on the side of being more generous."

Thomas Tape, MD, FACP
Professor of Internal Medicine
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

"At the heart of a lot of discontent right now is all the metrics that are being placed on physicians. Medicine is becoming one big cookbook of measurements."

Tim Hoff, Ph.D.
Professor of Health Management and Health Policy
Northeastern University

"If you’re not engaging in social media, your online reputation is being created about you without your participation. So I highly advise physicians to get involved in social media so they can help shape who they are online."

Jeffrey Livingston, MD
MacArthur OB/Gyn
Irving, Texas

"Healthcare reform…in its current iteration has just been a systematic unraveling of private, independent practice. It makes all physicians…widgets on an assembly line."

Christopher Unrein, DO
Independent Internist

"It’s very hard to practice medicine when you can’t control the prices you charge and can’t relate them to the cost of doing business."

Ronald Feldman, MD
Gastroenterologist
Escondido, California