BILHARTZ, MD: ‘Targeting physician salaries: I speak for the ten-percenters.’

By Rocky Bilhartz, MD

March 14, 2015 – I’m a cardiologist. But if you believe the news, you will assume my entire medical specialty is shady and full of morally suspect physicians. Let me tell you why.

Recently, two articles surfaced in the lay press, one published by the New York Times and the other by U.S. News & World Report. Like the majority of medical news that I’ve seen originate from these sources over the last few years, the articles provide no meaningful contribution to advancing quality standards in medicine or improving patient care. They are written by medical outsiders and fraught with errors. But, to their defense, the authors have been tasked with the impracticable job of interpreting a data dump of poorly understood numbers released to the general public by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

In case you haven’t been intently following this ordeal (in which case I commend you for…