See what is happening as more specialists are taking on primary care responsibilities:
“Would you be my primary care doctor?”Specialists are hearing this more and more as the primary care shortage intensifies. Especially if we have to see them more than once for ongoing medical concerns like a pacemaker, defibrillator, heart failure or more recently, diabetes. It’s becoming increasingly challenging for patients to obtain appointments with their primary care doctors, perhaps due to overbooked appointments, manpower shortages, or the reluctance of the patient to deal with unfamiliar “physician extenders.”
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{ 4 comments }
why not just get rid of generalists? if you have DM associated morbidities have a endocrinology trained internist…long time smoker or asthmatic see a pulmonary trained internist? etc etc… all medicine specialists trained as internists so they are qualified.
mike
Hi Mike,
That might be a good idea except for a few problems. First of all there are nowhere near enough endocrinologists or pulmonologists to do the job. Most diabetes and copd is managed by family physicians or general internists and if every diabetic went to an endocrinologist for his diabeic care you would need 5-10 times more endocrinologists. The second problem is that often patients do not know really what the problem is when it begins so they do not know which specialist to go to initially. Also most endocrinologists, cardiologists, etc. do not want to do primary care. That is why they went into a specialty. I am sure that there are other problems with this idea but these are just a few of the major ones.
Jimmy
…there you go…nobody really wants to do the dirty job of primary care — especially since there is dearth in compensation!
if the primary care job is compensated more…perhaps the specialists won’t hesitate doing it too
but then this will be too ideal, and the payment schedules have been hijacked by specialists and ivory tower types – the ones who will protect their comfortable turf by coming up with more re-/certification exams?
No.
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