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THE SURGEONS'
Lounge
SURGEON SCRIBE Surgeon's Book Blasts the Big Business of Surgery
When general surgeon Paul
Ruggieri, MD, FACS, wrote
Confessions of a Surgeon, a
blunt look at what goes on behind the closed doors of ORs, he planned to include a chapter on the money side
of surgery. But that chapter became The Cost of Cutting, his new 320-page paperback on the dirty business of surgery (paulruggieri.com/cost-of-cutting). That's how fed up Dr. Ruggieri was with how back room political power plays and hospitals buying up surgeons' practices in his hometown of Fall River, Mass., impacted the choices patients have in where they go for care.
One turf war for cases really bothered the independent-minded physician. A local hospital used economic credentialing to push a well-known surgeon group out the door, forcing them to negotiate with another hospital from a position of vulnerability. Patients who had seen the surgeons for years at the hospital didn't have access to them anymore.
Dr. Ruggieri had had enough. "I'm sure what's going on in my community is emblematic of what's going on in every community," he says.
Money generated in ORs impacts patient care. "It's becoming a
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FOLLOW THE MONEY
Paul Ruggieri, MD, FACS,
is fed up with what's driving surgery.
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