●Doctors are becoming salaried, joining the trend pushed by the Cleveland and Mayo clinics and some other top providers. Today, about 60 percent of doctors nationwide are on salary, up about 10 percent from several years ago. Cosgrove predicts that this will rise to at least 70 percent over the next decade.
Salaried doctors won’t have the same economic incentives to provide expensive treatments that may not make sense for patients. They’ll be paid well (an internist at Cleveland Clinic starts at about $120,000), but they won’t receive the stratospheric salaries that once encouraged many a doc to dream of driving a Porsche…
●Health records are finally going electronic, which should allow additional big savings. It’s an expensive transition (Cleveland Clinic has spent $300 million on electronic records systems over the past decade), but it will pay huge dividends in cheaper and better care.
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