A reader writes:
I agree with you completely on the importance of having a physician functioning as the coordinator of care for a patient (I have always assumed that a primary care physician would do that) my experience has been that they resist that role. I have become my own and my wife’s primary care person because of that.
There are hospitals that discourage primary care doctor participation. If you are admitted to the hospital, then primary care is not permitted to participate in treatment even if they on the staff. Rather you are under the care of the “attending physician” or the “hospitalist”. If you are discharged and readmitted a few days or weeks later you have a completely different set of physicians. Your primary care is not permitted to intervene (and doesn’t feel like endangering their position by forcing intervention).
In these situations a third party (in this example it was me) forced coordination by hand caring documents and reports, and running down staff members and having adhoc meetings. Primary care physicians don’t do that.
Welcome to the today’s hospitalist model, a trend entirely dictated by the physician payment system. Primary care physicians are now able to stay in the office, where they can see patients more efficiently, instead of dividing their time between the hospital and clinic.
The downside is the lack of continuity, as this reader has experienced. Indeed, if an inpatient is discharged and readmitted, an entirely new set of doctors may assume care. In many cases, the primary care physician does not have say in this matter.
That is why the implications of allowing hospitalists to care for inpatients need to be clearly communicated to patients.
Regarding the coordination of care, this often is done inadequately. Again, the payment system does not offer any economic incentive to do so. Time spent away from the patient coordinating care is done pro-bono, and the already strained generalist can ill-afford to do so in these trying financial times.
Good news is on the horizon. The so-called “medical home” model is being piloted on select Medicare populations, where money is alloted for coordination of care between hospitals and specialists. Initial results are promising, and can help reduce overall health costs.
Until this model is widely adopted, the current patchwork of providers providing the majority of the care in this country will continue to be the norm.
Related posts:
- The market works for hospitalist salaries
- What if you had a medical home . . .
- Reader take: Ganging up on primary care
- How to survive heart disease requiring quintuple bypass surgery, did continuity of care care help?
- Rehospitalizations
- Primary care is damn cheap, and can solve our health care woes
- The surgical hospitalist
{ 3 comments }
Five years ago my local hospital pushed out primary care docs in favor of hospitalists. Although the hospital administraters now have their shorter length-of-stays, they bitterly regret their decision; we primary care docs seldom refer to their specialists, nor to their radiology nor P.T.
As for me, my harried weekend trips to the ER have been replaced by languid afternoons at the beach. I wouldn’t return to the hospital at three times my old reimbursement.
But you know this really does leave patients in a horrible place. Drs. say over and over how they want to be in charge of their patients, and yet, when we need them the most, they gladly turn us over to someone we don’t know. All for the sake of not having to come to the hospital and following up with their patients.You can’t stay totally in the loop and gain all this trust and respect you want when you throw us overboard (to strangers) every time we get REALLY sick. You can’t have it all.
ANON,
What the heck are you talking about? Doctors have a desire to take care of patients and provide the personal touch. I feel this way as a physician. But when the payment for my service is low and decreasing why would I? If payment for in hospital services were increased, I guarantee you that more doctors would be following their own patients rather than signing over to hospitalists.
The reason this does not happen is because insurance companies do not want to pay more, and the hospitalists get patients out of the hospital sooner. It’s a dollars and cents argument. If patients really want their personal family/IM docs to be taking care of them in the hospital, they would be paying the premium required to entice PCP’s to see patients in the hospital.
This is not going to happen. Everything needs to be cheaper and faster. Patients are not going to pay hundreds/thousands of dollars more so that their personal doc will take care of them.
This is the reality.
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