Primary Care - The Need for Reinvention (New Eng Jour Med)

[pinto]

great series, looks at the big picture of health care in America - pinto

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/359/20/2085?query=TOChttp://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/359/20/2085?query=TOC

The Need for Reinvention

Thomas H. Lee, M.D.

The editors asked several experts to share their perspectives on the crisis in U.S. primary care. Their articles, which address this crisis from six different angles, follow. We also brought the five U.S. contributors together for a roundtable discussion of the problems and potential solutions for training, practice, compensation, and systemic change. A video of the discussion and reader comments can be seen at http://www.nejm.org .

Primary care has been one of the best jobs in medicine, and it can be again. In fact, primary care must recapture its attraction for the next generation's best trainees — or the chaos and inefficiency of U.S. health care will only worsen.

The challenges are formidable, for there are so many reasons for young physicians to go into other fields. Many physicians graduate from medical school with staggering debts, and procedure-oriented specialties offer higher potential incomes. The work of primary care is itself overwhelming. Primary care physicians often go home worried that they may have made mistakes, or dispirited because they did not complete their work.

But as Treadway's story reminds us, failure is not an option. Throughout their lives, but particularly at the end, patients want and need physicians who focus on the people who have diseases, not just the diseases that they have.

<snip>

Source Information

Dr. Lee is network president at Partners HealthCare System, Boston, and an associate editor of the Journal.

The New England Journal of Medicine is owned, published, and copyrighted © 2008 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Caring physicians who treat the whole person

this is what we need. This is what the Foundation where I work is all about.

[pinto]

2. What type of Foundation? I work (semi-retired) in Public Health, at the county level.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. A non-profit health education foundation

in Arkansas.

[pinto]

4. Cool.

:thumbsup:

:thumbsup:

Health care "basics" - from the local, community level on up - would reap big dividends in the big picture. While public health, as a government function here, is cutting back due to budget constraints many of us are working to maintain support for community based non profits. The overhead is lower and the connection to the community is, at times, better than we as a public entity can develop.

Kudos.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

5. Thanks

We have a Laboratory Assistance Grant fund where we pay for the lab work needed by patients who don't have insurance or the money to pay for them. We also do not charge Medicare patients for office visits, but rather ask for donations. A lot of people who come see us have chronic problems. Many of them have been solved or helped by checking for simple things like food sensitivity or problems with metabolism. It is amazing what a change in diet can do!