From payer behavior to burnout, three physician leaders joined Becker's to discuss what they like least about their job.
Editor's note: These responses were edited lightly for clarity and length.
Michael Cashman, MD. Dermatologist in Bellevue, Wash.: The least favorite thing about my job is battling with insurance companies to get treatments approved for patients with insurance. When they get to dictate how many other treatments must be documented as failed or not tolerated, they essentially get to practice medicine, taking away my autonomy in making decisions about what I think is best for the patient.
Dean Frate, MD. President of Medical Staff at Summa Health (Akron, Ohio): The necessary compromises in modern healthcare. There is a sense of accomplishment in finding the most optimal combination of timing and resources available to achieve particular goals, be they clinical, financial or interpersonal. There is an enjoyable blend of cognitive, emotional and creative work required to find the best balances. Less academically, it can be frustrating that many of the constraints to those optimizations are externally imposed. In clinical scenarios that sense is most profound, where optimal may fall short of ideal when constrained by payer source, expiring authorization time frames, or shifting regulations. Even in those situations, partnering with patients and their larger care unit (family, partners, guardians, caregivers, friends, etc.), sharing the decision-making process with them, and finding the best mix available to move care in a forward direction, past the frustration, is rewarding.
Grace Terrell, MD. Chief Product Officer of IKS Healthcare: My least favorite part of my job is interacting with the folks in the healthcare industry who have become cynical and burned out as a result of our current healthcare impasses, who therefore cannot see the possibilities that are within our grasp to get us beyond them. I have a daughter who is a fourth-year medical student headed into pediatrics. She will be the third generation in her family to be a female primary care physician (my mother-in-law is also a doctor). I want the healthcare delivery system she works in to be far superior to the one we have now.