Media Matters takes apart a charge made by several opponents (including Marco Rubio who used his Twitter account to spread the wolf ticket) to President Obama’s Health Care Reform plan, that claims a “New England Journal of Medicine study” found 46 percent of physicians ready to “leave medicine or try to leave medicine” if health care reform passes.
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.”
