The PMD Critical List: How Many Patients Is Too Many?

It appears that doctors are treating way too many patients for what is considered reasonable. That story tops this week’s PMD Critical List. Also making the list: An African American surgeon who responded to the police shootings in Dallas weighs in on gun and racial issues, and female physicians in even the most prominent schools are being paid significantly less than males.

• How Many Patients Is Too Many? (Becker’s Hospital Review)

By industry standards, the number of patients a primary care physician treats is considered to be 2,500. Now American Board of Family Medicine researchers find that this number is “neither accurate nor reasonable.” It should be 1,200 to 1,900 patients per physician.

• 25% of US Physicians Are Foreign Born (Forbes)

At present, more than one-quarter of the physicians in the United States are foreign-born, according to data from a new Chicago Council on Global Affairs report. “Whether it’s due to cultural need, community demand or economic impact, allowing more foreign-born individuals to work in the health labor sector is going to become more and more important.”

• “Killing Must Stop” Says Dallas Doctor (CNN)

Dr. Brian Williams, a trauma surgeon at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, was on duty when wounded police officers began to arrive in the ER. The African-American doctor offers his compelling thoughts on gun and racial issues. “This is not the kind of world we want to leave for our children.”

• Doctors Should Not Ignore Patient Concerns (UPI)

“Self-rated health—a patient's answer when asked how they feel—has value, according to new Rice University research, because indicators of long-term health problems such as inflammation are not always picked up by the standard battery of tests conducted by primary care physicians.”

• Dr. Paid Less: an Old title Still Fits Female Physicians (Boston Globe)

“Female physicians at some of the nation’s most prominent public medical schools earn nearly $20,000 less a year on average than their male colleagues, according to JAMA analysis. Before adjusting for factors that could influence income, the absolute difference between the genders was more than $51,000 a year.”

• 50% of Physicians Don’t know About MACRA (State of Reform)

A transformative law is on track to fundamentally change how physicians are reimbursed under the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule, but half of the nation’s doctors have never heard of it, according to a new Deloitte Center for Health Solutions survey.

• Most Doctors Unengaged With Their Organizations (Healthcare Dive)

In another blow to leadership in today’s medicine, only 20% of physicians admit to being actively engaged with their healthcare institutions and likely to go above and beyond their jobs, according to the 2016 Physician Leadership and Engagement Index survey by Athenahealth.

• Let Physicians Control the Healthcare System (MedPageToday)

An interesting essay from Dr. James Burdick, the author of, Talking About Single Payer: Health Care Equality for America, who believes that “a single-payer healthcare system could work in the US, but only if doctors are involved with running it.”

• Medicine’s Strangest Cases (Daily Mail)

A review of an amusing new book out of Great Britain about “extraordinary but true” doctor-patient cases. “Doctors are faced most days not with diseases, but with bonkers patients, many of whom just want a chat,” explains author Michael O’Donnell.