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Originally Posted by MikeWaters
I guess you don't fully understand how this works. Yes, ER docs usually get paid on a contractual basis, so it doesn't matter if they have insurance or not (generally speaking, because you can bet that if very few people in the ER have insurance the contracted amount will be less).
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First of all I do fully understand how it works and I resent the implication that I am just someone throwing things out here. You seem to concur with my original point that the Hospital is taking the hit with the ER Docs...
Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeWaters
But what happens when surgery is required. The on-call surgeon is called. Why is he on-call? Because he has privileges. Why does he have privileges? So he can do surgeries at that hospital. Does he get paid for doing surgery on the destitute? No.
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There are two basic models for physician payment at hospitals. You can either be a paid employee of the hospital or you can have priviledges and have the hospital as your "work shop" and generally the hospital does its billing for them. For the 1st model the hospital takes the charity hit just like the ER Docs. For the second, it is true that the doctor will take the hit. The thing is its not that big of a hit for a doctor. One hour of work or a thousand dollars once a quarter is not going to kill them. The hospital pays for the nurses, bed, billing etc...
Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeWaters
I can only think of one medical provider in town that works with the poor that isn't either govt. or contracted with the govt. But they are beneficiaries of a professional golf tournament, and they don't serve that many people and only do counseling.
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If a hospital accepts medicaid and medicare they are contracted with the goverment as previously pointed out in this thread Methodist hospital provided 85 million in charity care last year.