Saturday, October 09, 2010

Doctors don't work on weekends?

That seems to be what Peter Orszag thinks. From his New York Times piece:


Doctors, like most people, don’t love to work weekends, and they probably don’t enjoy being evaluated against their peers. But their industry can no longer afford to protect them from the inevitable. 


Via Gateway Pundit.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't think you're being fair to his piece - pretty much of a strawman you put up. Anyway, he's not wrong in that docs (esp senior ones in non-shift based jobs) do trend towards five day weeks. Schedules are also usually built around a five day week even for interns and residents, with the inevitable rostering for weekend cover.

Robert W Donnell said...

Straw man? I quoted him directly. If I had selectively quoted the weakest of his points it still might be a straw man, but I didn't. Even more ludicrous was his point about comparisons with peers and quality management. That got started with PSROs in the 1970s, accelerated with the advent of DRGs in the mid 80s and really got into high gear with managed care in the mid 90s. Docs have, for the most part, sat still for it and its unintended consequences for decades.