GERMAN BRAIN DRAIN
Sick of Bad Pay, Doctors Flee Germany
By Udo Ludwig
German doctors are packing their scalpels and seeking their fortunes abroad, lured by the prospect of far higher pay and driven away by stifling bureaucracy in their country's health service.http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,399537,00.html
Where are they going? Take one guess...
"The NHS is flying in doctors from Germany to provide out of hours cover for GPs, at a cost of up to £650 a day.
The news comes a week after it was revealed that a health board hired a doctor from Italy to cover a remote practice over Christmas.
Such doctors are being used to work shifts, including holidays and weekends, that British GPs no longer have to cover following contracts introduced in 2005.
A Scottish health board is using GPs from Germany to provide out of hours care, sourced through a foreign recruitment agency.
NHS Grampian has used at least two doctors from Germany through the agency, which charges between £60 and £65 an hour for shifts that can last for up to 10 hours. Over Christmas, another Scottish health board, NHS Highland, flew Dr Annibale Bertollo from Venice to provide cover for a practice in Wester Ross for five days."
Here's wondering if Obama will praise the German health care system as a model for reforming our own....