After Hours
A recent study in the journal Health Affairs concluded that:
When patients have access to after-hours services with their primary care provider, emergency room usage is significantly lower and fewer patients go without needed medical care.
Chalk that up to NO SHIT, SHERLOCK. The issue is that doctors don’t want to work 24/7 because they are human and have lives of their own. How about using texting, emailing, or calling? That, too, is a burden and doctors don’t get remunerated for their work. Trust me, the government’s answer to this study’s findings will be to DEMAND doctors offer more after-hours services, which will just make more physicians hate their jobs and/or quit.
The only answer is to remove the middle men and have patients pay their doctors directly. This will lead to physicians doing after-hours care as part of his business. The physician would do this because he has one-third the patient panel and is doing what he can do to compete and make his patients happy.
As a psychiatrist in private practice, never empaneling w/ anyone, I’ve always been on call for my patients 24/7, and in the world of cell phones and notebook computers, I even prefer to be available when out of town/on vacation.
By turning off my phone — which is also my office phone — at night and using a beeper for emergencies, I get woken up 1 or 2 x’s a year for someone’s crisis.
I do have less patients, but I have a lot more time for my life, don’t have the hassle and make as much money as many of my beleagured colleagues who sign on but then grouse about their managed care contracts.
We — as physicians — started thinking about clocking out when our profession started being managed by others, stopped being a “calling” and started being just a job.
Treat us like employees, and we’ll end up acting like them.
I prefer to avoid others controlling me, and I love my boss!
I am sure that a Oxys vending machine would bring the ED visits down too.
Should we try that instead?
You want more primary care? Pay more and reduce paperwork. I did rural primary care for 9 years. Now, I work in the ER only. I make more. I work fewer hours. I have less paperwork. I will never go back. I hear “experts” talk about recruiting kids from small towns and paying loans will be the answer. Hogwash. In the small town where I worked, I wrote many recommendations for kids to get in to medical school. Six of them are now doctors. Not one is doing primary care.
Amen