Everything is going to be OK

Los Angeles, CA
Joined August 2016
Jenanan Vairavamurthy, MD retweeted
Medicare gives hospitals an inflation update every year. Doctors don't get one. Then everyone wonders why practices sell.
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Jenanan Vairavamurthy, MD retweeted
Important slide that for private physician. Hospital docs probably don’t care. RVU worker bees. RVU decided by someone else. IVUS cost $650 Hospital makes $5400 with stent, without $2,260. Physician performing makes $90 if lucky. Name of the game is facility fee. Profits hospitals make is insane. Doctors are the one getting blamed. @DutchRojas
Helpful slide from admin regarding costs/reimbursement of IVUS, IFR, CathWorks
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Jenanan Vairavamurthy, MD retweeted
Very thoughtful article. Academic medicine needs to figure out how to right the ship. More talent are leaving academics for private or industry opportunities. The question to ask now is, “Does prestige of academics even matter to the new generation? opmed.doximity.com/articles/…
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Jenanan Vairavamurthy, MD retweeted
It's astonishing how little attention the Tamil mass grave is garnering internationally.
A Sri Lankan mass grave excavation has uncovered 582 skeletons, including babies and children. The site is linked to allegations of military killings of Tamil civilians during the civil war, with investigations delayed for 30 years. Al Jazeera’s Minelle Fernandez reports.
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Jenanan Vairavamurthy, MD retweeted
Lucy’s last day at @MountSinaiNYC after six months in the hospital.
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Jenanan Vairavamurthy, MD retweeted
Some people have asked me why I’m making fun of that JAMA viewpoint piece so much. It’s because corporate propaganda is not benign. It influences both public sentiment and government policy. To issue a press release on your company’s website touting biased comparisons as evidence of your product’s efficacy is one thing. To publish what amounts to a corporate advertisement with the imprimatur of a prestigious peer-reviewed journal (albeit under the guise of a “viewpoint” piece) is entirely another — co-opting the legitimizing effects of journal publication to imply that somehow the scientific community has blessed your company’s product. The article in question will no doubt be used by its heavily conflicted authors to garner further investment for their companies and to lobby the government to shape CMS policy in their favor — giving further institutional credence, and potentially public money, to their proprietary technology. The AI hype cycle will continue with its air of inevitability, despite not having objectively demonstrated benefit to anyone apart from corporate shareholders.
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Whoa.
AI systems are already superhuman at playing games: Chess, Go, Starcraft. @GetPrescience is the first health system that models medicine as a game. It plays to win, and it’s really good at it. We invited a team to film a short documentary about what we’re building.
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Jenanan Vairavamurthy, MD retweeted
AI systems are already superhuman at playing games: Chess, Go, Starcraft. @GetPrescience is the first health system that models medicine as a game. It plays to win, and it’s really good at it. We invited a team to film a short documentary about what we’re building.
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I've spent so much time in healthcare and still feel behind on policy - how legislation quietly dictates my day to day and affects my lifelong path of being the best doctor I can be. Self-studying now, but would to connect with 1-2 people with similar curiosity.
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I will die on the hill that @shailinthomas runs the best med Twitter account
POV: you’re in the hospital for appendicitis and they send the med student in to test your cranial nerves
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Jenanan Vairavamurthy, MD retweeted
From medical school through faculty, I have “rested my eyes”: • at a table in a boardroom • in an empty hospital bed in some random side room • on the floor of an office • on a camping cot in an office space • on an air mattress in a conference room (during a hurricane) • in a call room • at a desk I’m not sure I’d call any of it sleeping.
Doctors of Twitter, have you ever snuck into an empty ICU bed and slept there? Ngl I’m eyeing those beds with envy cuz they’re nicer than the on call room beds but I don’t actually have the guts to go do that
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Jenanan Vairavamurthy, MD retweeted
Nobody handed me this. No hospital system. No corporate group. No investors. Just a gutted-out restaurant, a vision, and a decision to bet on myself. I used to be part of the system. Leaving it was the best professional decision I ever made. Welcome to my practice. #PrivatePractice #Urology #IndependentMedicine #CentralPA #MensHealth #WomensHealth – at Lebanon, PA
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Jenanan Vairavamurthy, MD retweeted
Banal reason of the day healthcare is broken: 1. Friend is a doc who prescribed his patient a branded drug 2. Finds out from the patient that the drug requires a prior auth 3. Completes the prior auth 4. Patient goes to the pharmacy and finds out they don't have any more of the branded drug just the generic 5. Turns out the generic requires it's own prior auth (patient is on a Medicaid plan) and the auth approval for the branded drug doesn't transfer 6. Patient buys the drug for the cash price just to not wait any longer and miss more doses of their drug
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Jenanan Vairavamurthy, MD retweeted
If we really want to make healthcare more affordable, we must address this next session. Every other idea is a distant third in terms of impact, compared to this….
One Person - One Doctor's Visit. Top portion - hospital claim - the facility fee. $1527 to the hospital just because the hospital owns the physician. Then add on hyper inflated lab charges. Bottom part - actual physician bill. Funny how the hospital determined that the office visit was a level higher than the physician bill. $78.93 is what was paid the physician. If this had been an independent physician (NOT hospital owned, we would have paid $186 - billed charges). Difference - no facility fee with an independent. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. #DPC #supportindependentphysicians #saynotoPPOs
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Jenanan Vairavamurthy, MD retweeted
A few NPs have a Doctorate. That 1st NP Degree can be obtained with a 20 month online program. You can't get a MD online. 3rd and 4th years of Medical School are all Hospital/Clinical Training. A NP can be a Cardiologist on Friday and a Gastroenterologist on Monday. So to say that even a NP with a Doctorate is even close to a 1st year Resident is far from being honest. And 85% reimbursement for an NP Note not Cosigned by a Doctor? That's the biggest lie of all. #Hospital #HealthInsurance #Corruption #Fraud
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Jenanan Vairavamurthy, MD retweeted
Altruism is an essential component of practicing medicine. It is associated with higher quality patient care. The problem arises when you cannot act in an altruistic manner due to systemic factors beyond your control. A common occurrence in medicine. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam…
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Jenanan Vairavamurthy, MD retweeted
Just when medicine has become incredibly complex due to dramatic scientific advances, the need for more expertise and individualization for best outcomes, and when patients want physicians who are competent, empathetic, and accessible… We are in the midst of continued physician burnout, loss of autonomy, and micromanagement. Physicians are leaving the profession early or cutting down work hours (FTE) to cope. Patients with complex problems want the best expert for their care but experts are leaving clinical jobs for non clinical ones. The solution will only come from visionary leaders who put the welfare of patients first. From physician Leaders who connect with their colleagues and find out what the problems are and genuinely try to help solve it. From realizing that a broken healthcare delivery system with big physician shortages particularly in fields like oncology where the choice of a wrong therapeutic strategy can have massive consequences affects everyone eventually. I’m not seeing much of the kind of leadership that’s needed, only a lot of fancy words and sentences that I really don’t know the meaning of.
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Frustrated physicians may see a union as a way of having a voice . Ultimately the voice will just be transferred from a hospital admin to a union rep. You will work to please the union. Patient care will deteriorate. You will clock out at 5 when a patient needs your attention because that’s the rule. It’s what has happened in other healthcare unions across the board. Though you may enter the field to help patients, you will transform into someone who puts the power of your union over patient care. I think it would begin a dark age for the medical profession. Better to try and exit the mess we are in by just agreeing to say no to grifting admins/middle management. Share your frustrations instead of keeping it all a secret.
Do you foresee unionization of employed physicians as an increasing trend across the United States? Why or why not?
67%Yes
16%No
17%Show results
619 votes • Final results
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Jenanan Vairavamurthy, MD retweeted
The greatest misunderstanding in healthcare is the belief that good people automatically produce good systems. They do not. Good people trapped inside bad games eventually begin making bad decisions, not because they became evil, but because the game grew stronger than the player. Perhaps we should heed the sage advice from Ice-T: “Don’t hate the player, hate the game.” Every executive, every physician, every nurse, every payer, and every regulator is simply responding to the incentives placed in front of them. Change the game and the players change. Change the incentives and the culture changes. Change the feedback loops and the future changes. Sacred wisdom has always understood this truth. I seem to remember reading "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." That pericope was so important - you find the exact wording in two different Gospels (Matthew and Luke). We become what we repeatedly practice. Systems become what they repeatedly reward. Maybe it’s time to change the game?! Carpe!
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