alt Hacker News> If a doctor is spending time on admin tasks instead of revenue-generating procedures, obviously the hospital has accountants and analysts who will notice this, yes?
I am going to assume that the Doctors are just working longer hours and/or aren't as attentive as they could be and so care quality declines but revenue doesn't. Overworking existing staff in order to make up for less staff is a tried and true play.
> I'll contrast your experience with a well-run (from a profitability standpoint) dentist's office, they have tons of assistants and hygienists and the dentist just goes from room-to-room performing high-dollar procedures, and very little "patient care." If small dentist offices have this all figured out it seems a little strange that a massive hospital does not.
By conflating 'Doctors' and 'Dentists' you are basically saying the equivalent of 'all Doctors' and 'Doctors of a certain specialty'. Dentists are 'Doctors for teeth' like a pediatrician is a 'Doctor for children' or an Ortho is a 'Doctor for bones'.
Teeth need maintenance, which is the time consuming part of most visits, and the Dentist has staff to do that part of it. That in itself makes the specialty not really that comparable to a lot of others.
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I feel like that's how you get Microsoft where each division has a gun pointed at the other division
Doesn't really matter the type of doctor, spending all their time on revenue-generating activities would seem to be better than only 75% generating revenue and 25% on "administrative and bureaucratic tasks" that don't generate revenue and which could be accomplished by a much lower-paid employee ("secretaries and assistants").
Perhaps you're correct that the doctors are simply working much longer hours but that's one group of employees among a hospital's staff who do generally have a lot of power and aren't too easy to make extraordinary demands of.