With the primary care shortage starting to gain traction within the mainstream media narrative, it’s inevitable that some will lash back against generalists. (via Bob Doherty)
In this rant, bordering on comical, by unhinged emergency physician Jonathan Glauser of the Cleveland Clinic, he attacks his primary care colleagues for promoting the patient centered medical home. Dripping with contempt, he says that “to fund such a venture for groups that are singularly inept at performing anything of value to society is pure folly and a waste of precious health care dollars.”
Failing to realize that the state of primary care is what it is because of underfunding, he accuses most offices of “seeing 25 patients (or 20 or 30) a day, so they and their office staff can knock off at 4:30 p.m.”
Not happy with smearing the generalists, he also takes shots at dermatologists (“hardly a field that would be missed by the American public”), surgeons (who “want a patient admitted to general medicine to manage a potassium of 3.4″), and orthopedists (who “consults medicine for a Tylenol order”).
Apparently, emergency physicians are the only “real” doctors in his eyes.
The nature of budget-neutral reform means that physicians like Dr. Glauser will take a substantial pay cut to adequately fund primary care.
He’s merely laying out the groundwork for a furious specialist assault on primary care that will be sure to come.
