A colleague in private practice, Dr. S of Plano, TX, sent me the following note he gave me permission to share: Since the beginning of 2011, we’ve observed a disturbing trend among our patients’ new insurance plans. At least two major payors (Aetna and Cigna) are now offering $0 or reduced...
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An article in Health Affairs documented well what all of us know in front-line medicine: patients who don’t feel well go the emergeny room. The study looked at data from a national survey and found that a minority of patients see their primary physicians (42%) for first-contact care, with visits to...
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Two more recent studies I didn’t mention last week documented how little influence electronic medical records (EMRs) had on outpatient care. One study measured 20 markers of quality between practices with and without EMRs over 255,402 national ambulatory patient visits. 19 of the 20 quality indicators were no different between the...
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Most observers of the American healthcare system conclude there is a primary care shortage, though opinion varies on what to do about it. Nurse practitioners and other mid-levels such as physician assistants have been suggested to fill the gap. Could they become the primary care providers of the future? I think...
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Is this a joke? A medical school that has no department of family medicine or even a division has been given a $30 million dollar anonymous gift to enhance primary care. This to a medical school that routinely sends less than 2% of its graduates into family medicine? This gift started...
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When I first stared hearing about the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) concept, I perceived it to be a euphemism. For whatever reason, the concept of primary care or family medicine hasn’t resonated with politicians, corporate benefits managers, or the general public. To me “medical home” was just a warm fuzzy term...
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