Getting Owned
The Graham Center Policy One-Pager put out a piece illustrated in the AAFP journal called Fewer Americans Report a Personal Physician as Their Usual Source of Health Care. Is that a surprise to anyone?
The report goes on to say:
- One in five Americans reports no usual source of health care
- The number of Americans reporting that they have a personal relationship with a usual source of care has declined steadily over the past 15 year
- Although the percentage of all persons who reported a usual source of care across the study period declined slightly, a more striking divergence was apparent in those who had a usual source of care.
- Declines in the percentage of people reporting an individual clinician as their usual source of care was countered by a nearly equivalent rise in those reporting a facility.
- The advent of patient-centered medical homes, broader primary care teams, and increased virtual contact may help to explain these findings and represent opportunities for improved outcomes. This important topic deserves further research and the attention of health care stakeholders.
This has always been the goal of hospitals and administrators and insurers. They want to make sure that patients don’t have a doctor but a system. Their system. The doctor is a pawn or chess piece that can be easily replaced. The bogus team concept was created to squash loyalties to a single doctor. You hear it when hospitals and insurers call themselves health care givers in their ads. You hear it when they devalue doctors and call them providers. It is time to stand up for ourselves and for patients and take the healthcare system back.
There is only one way to take the system back: stop playing the insurance game. Go to cash only and let the patient collect from the insurance company they chose. It is their insurance company, not the docs. Wake up before you become an extinct species.
This is interesting, because I was having just this conversation with a very friendly and bright 65-ish yo pt. at our newly-opened urgent care office the other day.
As she was walking out, she said, “You folks are so nice, and so efficient that I’m going to come here for all my medical care from now on.”
I gave her the usual response about how she couldn’t do that, continuity of care, blah, blah, blah.
She replied that her primary doctor was difficult to get an appointment with, that she usually saw a PA or someone new whom she doesn’t know, that they tend to be unpleasant, if not downright nasty in the office, and that she had lost a great deal of confidence in their skills.
And I realized that the average primary care office (nowadays associated with a hospital) has completely lost touch with the four old-fashioned requirements for a successful practice, while we, in our private urgent care business, had completely usurped them, to wit:
Ability, Availability, Affordability, and Affability.
Do I hear an “Amen” Doug?
AMEN!
Let’s see.
For the past decade, the AAFP’s message to the world has been: family physicians and their practices are so grossly incompetent and mismanaged that they need to be “transformed;” and that medical care is provided not by doctors but by teams. And now they’re surprised that patients don’t have a relationship with a personal physician?
Something else that’s really interesting: in the annual year-end flurry of “aren’t we wonderful, look at all the great things we’ve done for you” articles on AAFP News, there’s not ONE single mention of the PCMH. It’s inconceivable that they’ve looked at the evidence and finally realized that this is a ruinously expensive, destructive style of practice management. My guess is that they’ve been told by their corporate masters that they have no intention of pouring any more cash down this endless drain, so shut up!
It’s all rather confusing isn’t it?