Joseph Martin, in a Boston Globe op-ed:
This march into more lucrative medical specialties is severely crimping the ranks of needed primary care doctors at the very moment the demand for primary care is on the rise . . .. . . Also needed to be addressed is the disparity in reimbursement where doing procedures pays well but thinking deeply about a patient’s problems has financial limitations. Reimbursements should be based on quality of care, not quantity.
Bottom line: the new requirements in medical care require new thinking in how to deliver that care.
And new thinking is what is needed in an election year featuring a major debate on healthcare. This debate needs to move beyond the issue of access and coverage to how the delivery system can be restructured to provide the best healthcare possible at an affordable cost.
Bravo.
Related posts:
- Can we rely on IMGs to help with the primary care shortage?
- Op-ed: Shortage of primary care threatens health care system
- Primary care shortage
- Saving emergency care with primary care
- Look at what a focus on primary care will get you
- Primary care shortage and physician recruiters
- Do patients think there’s a primary care shortage?
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“…But most important, new models of healthcare delivery must be developed – with a new focus on team work, where, for example, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and social workers form efficient groupings to consider patient-centered care. Teamwork and new ways of delegating treatment will take the load off of the hard-pressed primary care physician….”
Baloney, money is still most important.
Most of us would be glad to hire RNs and other staff and form teams to take the load of us. But that takes money, these people don’t work for free (many RNs make more than us per hour). The type of employee most of us can afford to employ usually doesn’t have the maturity or skills to handle much delegation beyond basic tasks.
Pay us reasonably and most of us are smart enough to hire good teams.
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