Halamka Ponders The Need to Leave Medicine If We Continue Our Current Trajectory

The famous Dr. John Halamka, Hospital CIO, Doctor, Former member of the HIT Policy committee, blogger at Life as a Healthcare CIO, recently read the 962 page MACRA NPRM and he wrote up a detailed look at the IT elements of MACRA. The post is worth a read if you’re interested in MACRA. Especially if you don’t want to spend the 20 hours reading it that he spent.

MACRA aside, he ends his post with this bombshell of a comment:

As a practicing clinician for 30 years, I can honestly say that it’s time to leave the profession if we stay on the current trajectory.

A doctor in the comments shared a similar view to Dr. Halamka:

Wow, I feel exactly the same as you do. As a front line ortho provider in a small group. I think now I get the message. CMS and ONC wants us out of private practice, either retire, or join as a salaried doc or hospital employee. That is the only justification for this 1000 page nightmare.

We’ve written a lot about physician burnout and many doctors distaste of all this government regulation, but having someone like John Halamka comment like this is quite telling. What’s scary for me is that I don’t see much light at the end of the MACRA tunnel from a physician perspective. Do you?

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

Categories