. . . how about a little attention to physician satisfaction? It’s a much more depressing problem.
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Hi,
The focus on patient satisfaction is discussed in an interesting podcast, that is here:
http://blogs.colgate.edu/2008/04/healthcare-system-needs-to-cha.html
Physicians are indeed in a spiritual funk. I am not saying that they are not all depressed, but their is a crises of confidence, courage, and pride. Ultimately patients pay the price. That of course is not and should not be anyone else’s problem to solve. The fact that some many docs accept it passively waiting to be treated fairly by insurance companies or the government is the best evidence of the crises and a sign of a certain amount of collective depression. Learned helplessness illustrated. The solution of course is for them individually to take charge of their lives and their practices and make them fullfilling, energizing, and fun, and not accept demoralizing business terms from third party payors.
Patient satisfaction is a laudable goal of any practice, and a necessary goal of a private practice. But the question that must be answered is “which patients”. If one sets the goal of patient satifaction as the goal, but defines the subset of patients as whoever is assigned the practice by the HMO or otherwise arbitrarily selected for the practice to serve, then one has an inherently unsolvable problem. Inevitably many of the patients will have goals that conflict with the other goals of the practice–like practicing good medicine. Drug addicts for example don’t like doctors who practice good medicine. Some people don’t want an assessment–just want their orders for tests and treatments fullfilled.
If on the other hand, the doctor defines the goals of a practice that he is enthusiastic about and committed to, and then offers the service to those patients who share those goals, then patient satisfaction is a good measure of either how successfully he is attracting patients who share his goals or how successfully he is fulfilling those goals–if the numbers are low, it is his task to figure out why.
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