Where is this? Right here at home. More on the military health system:
I spoke to one Army doctor the other day – a chief of family practice at a good-sized facility. Let’s call him Dr. Jonah. He oversees about a dozen doctors, each with at least 21 patients per day.Which sounds like a lot – until you consider that he’s got a patient base of over 18,000. Which means that diabetics or hypertensives — who should be seen at least four times annually– are only seen once a year. “There are women who haven’t gotten pap smears in years, who go without mammograms for years,” Dr. Jonah says. “The people that the government promised would take care of their health care are not getting nearly the coverage they need,” he sighs.
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- Bribing patients to follow doctor’s orders
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{ 6 comments }
I am a urologist at a major military facility and there are 3 of us for over 400,000 active duty and dependents in our area.
I was a military doc for 4 years. These numbers are a bit deceptive. Most of these patients are dependents/retirees and have the option of seeing civilian docs through Tricare/Champus. However, for reasons I could never understand, they have an indoctrination that THE BASE would take care of every need of theirs for life, including free tylenol and cheap cigarettes
Not all civilian docs, I swore off Champus years ago because it was too much hassle to deal with them.
No one takes Champus Prime around here. Pays close to Medicaid levels. We thought long and hard on this one since we are patriots but the reimbursements are embarassing. We do take Champus Standard though.
well the green side unit i served in had 1 doctor for 2500 men. navy corpsman (field meds NOT just IDCs) are given a great deal of responsibility in terms of diagnosing and treatment. this meant you would get seen, but probably not by an MD.
mike
I’m pretty sure the military lets nurses do surgery too. Most military hospitals are run by nurses because doctors cant stand the military system and get out as soon as they can, wheras the nurses love it and stay 25 years and move up the ranks.
As a result, you got a nurse with 25 years of military experience but only 2 yeras of college dictating medical care to a doctor.
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