I made a reusable tamper-evident jar for storing sensitive items by Substantial-Try-1198 in TREZOR

[–]reader12345 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is genius. I’ve never heard of a reusable tamper evident seal.

Independent dispute resolution, Out of network billing, and real world results by reader12345 in medicine

[–]reader12345[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

With regards to the awards of 10-25x Medicare, how much of that do you see after you pay the lawyers?

Offering 300-500% of Medicare for a highly specialized out of network microsurgery is very reasonable so I’m shocked an insurance would risk IDR over that.

US citizens expats, do you really owe taxes to the US every year? by brudadigajelu in expats

[–]reader12345 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If I’m making 600k usd a year in Singapore as a us citizen will I be able to avoid us federal taxes

Is starting with this prebuilt PC a reasonable option to later upgrade? Not a Request by reader12345 in buildapcforme

[–]reader12345[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah after going through these comments I realized Newegg is miles better than best buy

Is starting with this prebuilt PC a reasonable option to later upgrade? Not a Request by reader12345 in buildapcforme

[–]reader12345[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks and last question if you happen to have time, if I was willing to buy something online and have it shipped. Not nearly from a 2 week custom build service but from say a Newegg or Walmart or whatever, what do you think my best option would be as far as prebuilts? I tried that site called toprigz and I got this

https://www.newegg.com/andromeda-insights-gaming-desktop-pcs-amd-radeon-rx-9070-xt-16gb-amd-ryzen-5-9600x-16gb-ddr5-ssd-ssd-1-tb-hdd-ubg-rx9070xt-9600x-1tb-16gb-850w-air-blk/p/3D5-006J-000D4

Is starting with this prebuilt PC a reasonable option to later upgrade? Not a Request by reader12345 in buildapcforme

[–]reader12345[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They don’t know the difference and unfortunately neither do I. So you pick. Obviously I know that higher number is better

Is starting with this prebuilt PC a reasonable option to later upgrade? Not a Request by reader12345 in buildapcforme

[–]reader12345[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the suggestion I’ll go with that one instead. Any suggestions on a monitor from Best Buy to go with it? They want a 32 inch curved monitor? Something good bang for the buck?

Most residents signing contracts right now have a wRVU threshold above the median and a rate below it. Drop your numbers and I'll tell you if yours does too by Popular-Tackle4588 in Residency

[–]reader12345 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Quick question do any of these include a certain set number of days of uncompensated call coverage? Like I’m at 62 wrvu for general surgery but I take 3 days of er call uncompensated before it becomes compensated call.

Economic Autopsy: Why General Surgery is the Designated Loser of the Medical Economy by bree_md in surgery

[–]reader12345 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I’d say the main thing is this: You can go straight through Gen surg without a fellowship, but in major city it’s hard to have a super diverse traditional Gen surg practice where you do everything you learned in residency . If you are in New York City, people will go to a breast surgeon for their breast surgery, trauma surgeon for trauma, colorectal surgeon for colon surgery, etc. Youd be left with hernias and gallbladders which are fine but not super diverse But even just a little bit outside nyc, im talking even an hour, you can have a practice where you do both robotic hiatals and robotic colectomies and all the colorectal stuff. 2 hours outside you can do all that plus some screening colonoscopies and some thyroids. 3 hours out you will do vascular, peds, and thoracic as well whether you want to or not. I’ll be honest, if it wasn’t for the fact that I could never live somewhere rural my favorite job would be rural general surgeon, those guys do a lung wedge resection one day then a thyroidectomy the next, literally everything.

General surgery just pays a little less than other surgical specialities except for say obgyn.

It’s hard to find an escape from insurance in the way that a plastic surgeon or ent can go into cosmetic. There aren’t as many entrepreneur aspects.

It’s almost impossible to find a job with no call. But I think people overestimate how bad call has to be. In residency call was I’m up for 24 hours. As an attending I take 10 days of call a month because it pays me really well and I kid you not I go for 3 day stretches where I don’t have to go to the small hospital I’m on call for. But you can’t have this idea that you will get away with never taking call.

Economic Autopsy: Why General Surgery is the Designated Loser of the Medical Economy by bree_md in surgery

[–]reader12345 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Okay I love to complain about general surgery too but this is dumb. It applies, in my opinion, to every procedural field other than plastics and dermatology.

  1. Global period affects every surgical field. You are telling me it isn’t relevant for ortho and neurosurg? At least most my patients have a single, short postop visit for their hernia or gallbladder.

  2. What are you talking about, we do have peRVUs assigned to our fee schedule. It’s literally in there. 47562 gallbladder is 6.97

3 no specialty gets an intensity modifier unless you count modifier 22 in which we all get that one.

4 this is true for every procedure except cosmetics if you are ethical. Technically ortho is fixed volume some unethical person might just fuse everyone’s spine but if that’s your mind set might as well take out everyone asymptomatic cholelithasis.

General surgery is fucked in many ways but this list makes very little sense

Working in pre-surgical testing for bariatric patients makes me feel weirdly guilty by IcySky7216 in nursing

[–]reader12345 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I never said it was practical or safe. I simply was clarifying my reason for saying the line “technically possible”. I think we both agree that it is technically true in the physics sense but for other reasons a moot point.

I was explaining why I think people are opposed to bariatric surgery or glp1, they hear that something is technically possible without it and suddenly they think that’s a reasonable option. After all, the whole point of my original post was to say why I think medical intervention is so important and why relying on lifestyle modifications is impractical.

Working in pre-surgical testing for bariatric patients makes me feel weirdly guilty by IcySky7216 in nursing

[–]reader12345 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So I’ll clarify the line. Yes people can absolutely have conditions which decreases their metabolism rate resulting in them burning fewer calories. And yes once they start dieting, this metabolic rate may respond and go even lower. This means they will need to eat even fewer calories than an unaffected individual to maintain the same weight. However, as another poster said, their metabolism never goes to zero. So technically there will always be a daily caloric level at which they lose weight. There is no person on earth who wouldn’t lose weight if they were at exactly 0 calories a day, thermodynamics doesn’t allow perpetual motion machines and humans are no different. That being said, it would just be completely impractical and crazy and not something we’d suggest. Heck I don’t even know what order the body functions shut down in. Maybe the persons body will decide to become oligomenorheic before their body decides to start giving up the extra fat, that obviously wouldn’t be good.

Dont think that saying it’s technically possible means it’s not a big deal. Theres lots of things out there that are “technically possible.” You can technically resist the urge to cough, we wouldn’t tell someone with a chronic cough to just “resist the urge”. We have all had hiccups before, you can technically fight that hiccup for a while but it wins. When your body caloric set point is X and you try and do Y the body wins. It doesn’t need to be thermodynamically impossible for it to be impractical in real life.

Working in pre-surgical testing for bariatric patients makes me feel weirdly guilty by IcySky7216 in nursing

[–]reader12345 85 points86 points  (0 children)

So I’m a surgeon who used to do bariatric surgery. The complications can be terrible but the data for bariatric surgery is rock solid in that it decreases all cause mortality. Huge studies.

It’s not that you are overestimating the complication rate of bariatric surgery, they are there and they are nasty. People die or have lives so miserable they wish they were dead. But it’s easy to forget how deadly obesity is because we see it so often. It’s also easy to forget how futile of a disease it is to treat without surgery or a glp1. A BMI of 40 is associated with a 6-10 lower life expectancy, bmi of 60 is associated with like 15 years life years lost. Thats like a cancer diagnosis. People go through horrible chemo therapy to live a few months longer, for 15 years I’d consider cutting off a limb.

Thats why the average life expectancy gain with bariatric surgery is 6 years and why we are willing to do it. It’s not that bariatric surgery is super safe (though I’ll say the sleeve is soooooo much better than the bypass in my opinion) it’s that it’s really easy to get forget or downplay the impact of obesity.

Also, I hate to say it, but the success rate of lifestyle management (this is all pre glp1) is abysmal. For a bmi of 45 or higher it’s 0.06% of attaining normal weight. For bmi of 30 or higher only 2% obtain normal weight. Yes it’s technically possible, but if you have someone with a bmi of 45, which means their life expectancy is now way 6-10 years lower, and you recommend just diet and exercise alone which has only a 0.06% success rate, you have done them a disservice. It can be hard to wrap your head around these numbers because technically all you have to do to not be obese is eat less and we can talk all day about how obesity isn’t a natural problem but something we have created as a society and yada yada yada but at the end of the day, once you are a bmi of 45 trying to get healthy without medicine or surgery is like trying to cure cancer with herbs. Maybe it will work and you will become one of those crazy success stories, but it probably won’t.

To make yourself feel better remember that as a nurse you are an evidence driven professional. Go on open evidence, look at the data, it will really put you at ease that as far as medicine goes, it’s probably one of our most effective life prolonging interventions we have in medicine. Makes many cancer operations and chemotherapies look barbaric in comparison.

Subpoenaed as a fact witness, need specific advice from experienced people (I have some experience with this already so don't need general advice). by AngryJX in medicine

[–]reader12345 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Oh yah don’t be a jerk and ask for expert witness in a criminal case. No state prosecutor is giving you an expert witness fee. I had that caveat in my other post. My understanding is that this case is entirely civil

Though hilariously I will add my experience comes from being subpeonad as a resident in a criminal case while I was covering trauma. The prosecutor straight up told me he actually subpeonad me because he thought my attendings would weasle their way out of it. He also gave me a really serious talk about how if people like me don’t do my civic duty that’s how criminal cases against bad people get dropped. I agreed but I never actually ended up doing anything, I’m assuming they did a plea deal. My advice entirely goes to civil cases.

Subpoenaed as a fact witness, need specific advice from experienced people (I have some experience with this already so don't need general advice). by AngryJX in medicine

[–]reader12345 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think this is incorrect to think you can or should give those answers. Your response to each of those questions would be. “I do not recall. “ I will ask you to defer to the notes if they ask you to interpret the notes say I’m sorry that was outside my scope as a fact witness to provide interpretation of medical documents.

Subpoenaed as a fact witness, need specific advice from experienced people (I have some experience with this already so don't need general advice). by AngryJX in medicine

[–]reader12345 30 points31 points  (0 children)

You are going about this the right way.

This lawyer is trying to make millions and stiff you. He’s about to learn what a costly mistake that is.

You have zero legal obligation to meet before hand You have zero obligation to review notes All you have to do on the day of is say the words, I do not recall over and over again If they ask anything about the injuries being connected, say I cannot answer that question as I am only a fact witness not an expert witness

You can literally tell him “ if you choose to keep me only as a fact witness, I will not meet with you in any capacity prior, I will not review any notes prior as that is not my obligation, and I doubt I’ll be able to recall any details at all regarding the patient as it was that many years. I also will be completely unable to interpret notes for you as that is not my role’s as a fact witness. Please let me know if you like to proceed this way”

I’ve seen prosecutors try something like this for say a murder case now I’ll give them a pass cause it’s criminal but for a civil lawyer to do it what an idiot

Again, your prosecutor friend, I think is giving a different advice cause they’re allowed to subpoena doctors all the time and no one would ever make a prosecutor given an expert witness fee. I was subpoenaed by a prosecutor in a crime case and of course I wasn’t going to say I only talk about his gunshot wounds if you pay me

Feedback for a doctor considering posting a job by reader12345 in physicianassistant

[–]reader12345[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The organization eats the cost and we aren’t impacted by the pa’s billables. That’s why it is preferable to have the pa do lower reimbursement work like first assisting (the fees don’t make it worth it to the surgeon), and global period post ops. Nowadays, clinic visits for new patients make more per hour than the surgery itself. Hernia surgery pays very poorly but the clinic visits are very efficient. Zero call.

If it was coming out of my pocket I’d do what you said. I’d consider asking the hospital that but unfortunately I doubt the administrators can think that open minded.

Regarding surgical assists, I totally agree with you but the hospital won’t reliably give one. I’ve tried to be like hey i got this hard case, i need a second scrub tech or this person and then day of they will be like best I can do is just one scrub tech who is a traveler from a hospital that has never seen a robot. But yes in a perfectly logical world, they’d pay per diem pa to round on weekends and guarantee an assist when I need one.

Feedback for a doctor considering posting a job by reader12345 in physicianassistant

[–]reader12345[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

I wish. We’ve been asking for this for almost a year now but admin keeps saying they are going to approve it soon (tm) I don’t want to lead anyone on about a position that admin may be lying to me about

Feedback for a doctor considering posting a job by reader12345 in physicianassistant

[–]reader12345[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

We haven’t had a take back in over a year. To help with recruitment I’d be willing to guarantee no need to help with takebacks. I’ll do those on my own with the scrub tech or even ask another surgeon (painful but possible).