drdoc

I would like to pose a question to the Hacker News community. If you had to, where would you cut costs? Do you think doctors are paid too much? Or nursing staff? Obviously, we think these services are overbilled but the reality of it is that most of these bills are not paid at all or paid for a fraction of what is billed.

As an anesthesiologist, this is a bad idea for various different reasons. There are a numerous reasons why a physician needs the tools that he needs. The type of procedure, the type of patient and the familiarity of the equipment. I routinely intubate patients with a particular type of tool because that is what I feel most comfortable with and I have trained with. Yes, I can intubate with the myriad of other devices but there is that 1 out of a 1000 chance (slim but not unrealistically slim because I do >1000 intubations a year) that I cannot intubate you and you need to have a tracheostomy or worse, you die.

Some may argue that we should all train with the same equipment, but even then, what about inherent differences in the physician or the patients. Maybe where I trained, all my patients had large tongues and I need a particular blade more often so I became better skilled with that or maybe my hands are just better with a particular blade.