Age has no validation as a marker for forced retirement. Only patient outcomes are valid. Powerful factors in that assessment include experience, patient mix, and the size of any difference. If the difference is 0.25%, as it is for age and sex of the MD, litigation against any party forcing retirement is justified by disparate impact. The practice will be judged in court using strict scrutiny. One can only feel a difference of around 30% at the gut level, after correcting for all other factors.
Aging has positive effects, more emotional well being, more emotional stability, better regulation of desires and urges. Experience gives the older person more solutions to problems, more practice of coping skills and of vocational skills. Slowing of neuronal processing is for milliseconds. Older people will emphasize other perspectives, need to compromise, and recognition of one's own limitations. They will see more positive in a situation when time is shorter. The cognitive benefits of aging are reviewed in a Scientific American article.
When you take out a doctor, you save the payer $4 million a year. What is not being calculated is the value of restoring the health of patients, in preventing additional health care expenses, and in restoring people to economic productivity. Spend $2000 for a year of medical care by an old doctor, return to a $60,000 a year job. That economic loss from getting rid of one old doctor may be $120 million per year, not placing any value on suffering. The drop in spending power by the patient reverbreates through the economy. Using the Keynesian multiprlier, up to $2.50 is removed from the GDP of the economy. This places no value on the suffering of the patient or of family.
Any error by the older physicians should be proven to be more frequent than that committed by the profession in general. While a medical error may have been committed, it must be proven to have the death or injury of the patient.
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