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08/26/2024 Jack Reingold, DPM
Who Decides Who is a Physician? (Rod Tomczak, DPM, MD, EdD)
I graduated from CCPM in 1979 and retired in 2023, practicing in San Diego, CA the whole time. Luckily, there were hospitals in the area that let me have surgical privileges when I started. Within 15 years, all the hospitals in my area granted podiatrists virtually full surgical privileges (including ankle) and admitting privileges. Managed care arrived and discovered that podiatrists delivered excellent, cost-effective care and began hiring them in great numbers. Kaiser Permanente Medical Group went from none to currently 21!
Hospitalists started calling us and begging us to take patients. Nobody seemed to care about our degrees, caring only if we could take care of their patients (and perhaps off their hands). The hospitals wanted us to take positions on many committees (of course they were none paid). I am not even sure if all the physicians in my community realized we had a different degree. Many of them became patients and never even mentioned it.
In my 41 years of practice, I do not even recall a patient asking me what degree I had or if I was a real doctor! The biggest problem with the DPM degree is that we are often overlooked by our legislators regarding new laws and regulations, which takes a lot of energy to correct.
Medicare and private insurance cannot always identify a MD or DOs specialty and their use of billing codes as easily as they can with a DPM after their name. This sometimes results in unfair, over scrutinizing of our claim. We are as knowledgeable in our area of expertise as any other specialty! Sure, in certain moments it would be easier to be an MD but, I would not lose any sleep over it.
What a great time to be a podiatrist. As I use to tell my son, "have fun, learn something and do some good."
Jack Reingold, DPM, Encinitas, CA
Other messages in this thread:
08/24/2024 Name Withheld
Who Decides Who is a Physician? (Rod Tomczak, DPM, MD, EdD)
Early this morning I had just finished my coffee and reading the latest PM News forum. Once again, we, as podiatrists, were discussing the DPM vs. MD/DO parity issue and whether or not we are physicians. As usual, many in our profession believe we are on par with the MD/DO group and should be treated as such by all and the other side believes we should remain as we are, our own profession.
I have to admit that there had been many times in my now 35 plus year career as a podiatrist that I have wished that I had gone the MD or DO route so I could be a “real doctor, a physician” but that had not been my path. I was daydreaming about what it would be like to be that “real doctor” and contemplating a second cup of coffee but my cell phone rang. It was a hospitalist standing in the ED at the local community hospital asking me to stop and see a diabetic with a foot infection that she was admitting. I agreed to do so, particularly knowing that I was headed to the hospital for surgery anyway so a consult would be easily accomplished between cases. I was tired. I had been up a good part of the night, in surgery. The ED had called about 11 PM and asked me to come in to see a 15 year old who was visiting from out of town and had fallen at a local hotel and had cut the top of her foot on a metal door. A tendon was severed and readily visible through the wound. They had already called ortho, which they typically do for trauma, but there was no bone involvement so ortho deferred to me (probably they didn’t want to go in at that time of night). I had gone in and as an on call team for the OR had just finished an appendectomy they were available to set up to repair this injury. I got home about 3:30 AM.
My day was already busy, over busy really. First to surgery, then the consult, then a stop to see the patient I had done and I & D on earlier in the week that was being discharged. Then to the office where I had two peer to peer calls to do to get MRIs approved, a call with the vascular surgeon I worked with regularly and I knew that there would obviously be calls that come in of some variety or another that would have to be dealt with, this on my afternoon “off” as no clinic patients were scheduled. Not having seen the new consult yet I had no idea if it would be a call to the OR to get some time that afternoon or evening or if it would be a “ follow” the patient with the hospitalist, non-surgically.
As usual, we had some family plans on the weekend with grandkids involved but my children knew well what I did for a living, having grown up with it and so they understood that plans sometimes were bumped or delayed, usually only by a few hours but none the less, sometimes were altered by a patient need or the hospital.
While at the hospital one of the internists stopped me in the hall and asked me to see his wife the following week for heel pain he could not resolve. Surgery went well and fortunately, the I&D from earlier in the week was going home, the patient was very gracious in praising me, “thank you doctor, for saving my leg” (those always embarrass me for some reason). The consult would be treated medically as agreed with infectious disease and the afternoon ended calmly.
Name Withheld
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