UPDATED EXCLUSIVE: New England Journal of Medicine says it didn't publish or produce health care "survey"
March 17, 2010 12:50 pm ET by Julie Millican
Right-wing media have seized on a dubious, three-month old email "survey" that purports to show that physicians are concerned about health care reform and that 46 percent of the primary care doctors surveyed "indicated that they would leave medicine - or try to leave medicine - as a result of health reform." Many media figures have falsely attributed this survey to the New England Journal of Medicine. For example, on Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade said: "The New England Journal of Medicine has published a report and did a survey, and they said the impact of reform on primary care physicians, 46 percent, they say, feel reform will force them out or make them want to leave medicine."
This is false.
Media Matters for America contacted the New England Journal of Medicine, which confirmed it neither conducted nor published the "survey."
NEJM spokesperson Jennifer Zeis told Media Matters that the study had "nothing to do with the New England Journal of Medicine's original research." She also made clear that the study "was not published by the New England Journal of Medicine," and said that "we are taking steps to clarify the source of the survey."
The "report" that right-wing media are citing actually appeared in Recruiting Physicians Today, which is an employment newsletter produced by "the publishers of the New England Journal of Medicine." According to Zeis, that report actually "was written by the Medicus Firm," the medical recruitment firm that conducted the "survey."
Here's how The Medicus Firm describes the "survey" methodology:
"The survey sample was randomly selected from a physician database of thousands. The database has been built over the past eight years by The Medicus Firm (formerly Medicus Partners and The MD Firm) from a variety of sources including, but not limited to, public directories, purchased lists, practice inquiries, training programs, and direct mail responses. The survey was conducted via emails sent directly to physicians."
The Medicus Firm's clients include hospitals and physician groups.
More to come...
UPDATE:
Following inquiries from Media Matters, the "NEJM CareerCenter" website has now posted the following statement, making clear that Recruiting Physicians Today is a "free advertiser newsletter" whose content is "produced by physician recruiting firms and other independent groups involved in physician employment" and that Medicus was responsible for conducting and publishing the "survey" in question. (NEJM tells Media Matters that The Medicus Firm "did not pay" to run the report.) From the statement posted on the NEJM CareerCenter website:
Recruiting Physicians Today is a free advertiser newsletter published by the Worldwide Advertising Sales and Marketing Department in the publishing division of the Massachusetts Medical Society. Each issue of the newsletter features research and content produced by physician recruiting firms and other independent groups involved in physician employment.
On December 17, 2009 The Medicus Firm, a national physician search firm based in Dallas and Atlanta, published the results of a survey they conducted with 1,000 physicians regarding their attitudes toward health reform. To read their survey results at The Medicus Firm website, click here.
The opinions expressed in the article linked to above represent those of The Medicus Firm only. That article does not represent the opinions of the New England Journal of Medicine or the Massachusetts Medical Society.
Indeed, The Medicus Firm's write-up of their "survey" touted the supposed importance of physician recruitment firms "[a]fter health reform is passed and implemented":
What does this mean for physician recruiting? It's difficult to predict with absolute certainty, but one consequence is inevitable. After health reform is passed and implemented, physicians will be more in demand than ever before. Shortages could be exacerbated further beyond the predictions of industry analysts. Therefore, the strongest physician recruiters and firms will be in demand. Additionally, hospitals and practices may be forced to rely on unprecedented recruitment methods to attract and retain physicians. "Health reform, even if it's passed in a most diluted form, could be a game-changer for physician recruitment," said Bob Collins, managing partner of The Medicus Firm in Texas. "As competitive as the market is now, we may not even be able to comprehend how challenging it will become after health reform takes effect."
So, in sum, the right-wing media has seized upon what appears to be essentially a promotional document from a physician recruitment firm in order to argue that health care reform will cause physician recruitment and retention problems in the future.
From the March 17 Fox & Friends:
Close enough for conservative talking points.
Be careful "thaneb" or you'll have Bill O'Reilly going after Kentucky Fried Chicken.
"Oh it's True, it's Damn True"
Mr. News
They're a corporation in good standing! Impeccable!
I would just change that a bit to "Corporate Person in good standing".
After all - thanks to the USSC, Corporations are people too.
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The Midnight Review
Emotional stress or excitement
Stretching of the stomach, as may occur after overeating, drinking carbonated beverages, or swallowing air
Abrupt changes in the temperature (as with drinking a hot beverage)
Alcohol binging
Smoking
Hmmm...
Also interesting:
When hiccups are associated with medical problems, the cause is usually irritation of one of the nerves in the chest. Examples include laryngitis, goiters (enlargement of the thyroid gland), tumors in the neck, infections near the diaphragm, and hiatal hernia (usually with gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD). Hiccups can also be triggered by excess alcohol use, kidney failure and other infections (especially ear infections). Rarer causes are aortic aneurysms and multiple sclerosis.
Your text to link here...
Feel free to draw all sorts of amusing conclusions... :)
It linked to an article in the right-wing Investors Business Daily and it was just another email solicitation (not a real poll) that recorded only the responses of those who felt like replying. Neil Cavuto also featured the IBD poll on his show.
p.s. As I was typing this comment Megyn Kelly on Fox News aired a story about the Medicus "poll" with a graphic that sourced the data to the NEJM.
Not me. This is outright lying.
It's the RIGHT thing to do!!.....
But I'm not holding my breath !!
Of course, the MSM completely ignores the most incriminating stories so they can sleep like babies knowing that they've maintained some disingenuous sense of "neutrality." WEEEELL, WHO CAN TELL WITH THIS SORTA THING. POLITICS, RIGHT? ALL ABOUT HE-SAID, SHE-SAID. It's almost if they're scared Republicans will start referring to them as the "liberal media" if they publish a story that attacks the action of one party.
...Oh, wait.
Or maybe they could work at Blockbuster. "Indiana Jones? Well, sure you can go ahead and rent that, but you know he's just a PhD and not a real doctor."
It would make buying jeans a whole new experience.
Doctors ALWAYS complain about how little money they make...but they know they're sitting on a gold mine and wouldn't give that up. The survey is laughable...
After the unbiased study Fox News reports: Health care reform will make doctors quit their jobs and we will have ZERO doctors left in America which means if OBAMA PASSES HEALTH CARE REFORM THE PLANET WILL EXPLODE AND EVERYBODY WILL DIE!
In a word: B-U-L-L-$-#-!-T
If after spending the money, incurring the debt, doing the work and putting in the time it takes to become a doctor, if you'd walk away over THIS, you'd have to be either (1) Crazy, (2) Stupid or (3) In your 60's and considering retirement anyway. (1) and (2) I wouldn't want to be my doctor ANYWAY. (3)? Whatever. If that pushes you over, there wasn't much keeping you there in the first place.
Putting all that aside, I don't really care what physicians think about how to FINANCE health care, any more than I care what an Accountant thinks about the lump on my [body part.] They should stick to MEDICINE and let the bean counter count the beans.
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IMHO
1)No real cost containment in the bill (the main reason the POTUS and Congress feel we need health care reform)
2) No Tort reform- Although the bill gives money to states to study tort reform any state that puts a limit on awards will lose funding!
3) Loss of control of doctor patient relationship- The HHS will have the ability to decide which treatments patient are allowed to get based upon medical research and on cost
4) More bureaucratic nightmares- Although private insurance companies have significant paperwork associated with them they are nothing compared to government run programs like Medicare and Medicaid. These two program often put unfunded mandates on physician offices that will allow them to save a few dollars by denying payments for services rendered.
Now I know most of you think that "h has lots of money, he is a doctor" when in reality physicians today make 40-50% less then they made in the 1980s. We have seen our expenses rise by 20-25% since 2000 and actual payments decrease by about 3-5%.
I would encourage each of you to read the bills before passing judgment. I know I have read both in their entirety and do not agree with the methods that are proposed to change health care.
Just when you think they've hit absolute bottom, they dig a hole to create a new bottom to hit.
As always the right is reading it backwards.
Falsifying such information literally kills people as health care providers depend upon NEJM for factual information.
Whoever would originate such a deception is deserving of prison time. NEJM is as close to the US gold standard of peer-review journals one could demand.
Researchers with whom I'm associated are awaiting publication of their clinical trial research in NEJAMA.
For those who aren't in medicine, recall "The Fugitive" with Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones where the backstory revolved around the falsified medical research, resulting in the attempted murder of Ford, and the murder of Ford's wife? That's overly dramatized. What was minimized were all the patients who died.
I still remember the juxtaposing pictures of a rifle pointed at our president's head on the blog page. Not once, but twice. Just an accident, my rear.
Thereby proving that a for-profit health care system is dangerous.
Thanks Fox News!
/snark
And we all know what happens to salaries when the demand increases? That's right - you guessed it. It's simple economics - you get death panels, of course.
Seriously, there goes the conservatives’ argument that Doctor's will be running away from their field. If anything, they'll be more highly sought after according to the SAME firm that created a poll saying the opposite thing.
Man, the hypocrisy.
That includes George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and my own Republican Congress men and all our State governors.
Because Obama is not a Natural Born Citizen, They all know it is unlawful and all of them have helped it to happen.
Therefore nothing citizen obama does sitting as an unlawful POTUS is legal.
http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~texdick/obama.htm
So you will have fewer doctors than before, but you'll simultaneously have a great influx of patients due to mandates and subsidies. So there will be more people needing care, and less care to go around because of fewer doctors. What will that lead to? Increased rationing, of course.
I've observed that usually by about this time, the standard GOP/conservative posters are either diverting our attention or telling us not to believe our lying eyes and ears.
I think this particular article is just too difficult to defend with blanket denials and distractions.
The frustration that follows is pointing out this sort of deliberate distortion, and realizing it will make no impact on the masses of Americans who call themselves conservatives.
You won't need to be published in the NEJM to try this little experiment:
Describe this story to a conservative friend, family member or co-worker, ask them to come to this site and read the article and then follow up with their own research if they are troubled by this web-site's mission statement.
The result will invariably be a reflexive denial and condemnation of the fact checkers who caught the lie, and a refusal to visit this website or do any follow up research.
Which of the following best describes your overall opinion / support for health reform?
I support the current proposed legislation – 28.5%
I support the current proposed legislation minus the public option* – 5.0%
I support reform but would prefer a different, more incremental approach - 63.0%
I prefer the status quo – the healthcare system is fine the way it is – 3.6%
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--- Note the result --- 96.4% of Doctors are PRO REFORM !!!
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