Estimates suggest that a primary care physician would spend 21.7 hours per day to provide all recommended acute, chronic, and preventive care for a panel of 2,500 patients. An average workday of 8 hours extrapolates to an ideal panel of 909 patients; let us make it an even 1000 to simplify. A primary care physician could easily meet acute, chronic, and preventative needs of 1000 patients, thereby improving access.
When did we physicians give up our freedom and basic right to earn a living?
Government and insurance companies should stop wasting dollars and cents chasing visions of value, rather use common sense and give physician outcomes the attention they deserve. Healthcare will be on better footing now and into the future.
The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act is to the education system what MACRA is to healthcare. Why must we keep repeating history?
I am not convinced time and money spent implementing new technology does anything to improve patient care; I am fairly certain, however, conversations with my patients provide considerable value.
My county with a population of 260,000 has NO psychiatrist. Not one. Many states all over are experiencing the same provider shortages. Can you grow psychiatrists somewhere at an accelerated rate, like that clone army in Star Wars, and drop them randomly by plane throughout the United States? That would be a good start. They could be raised to believe indentured servitude is their destiny.
To genuinely stand with these forgotten children between their rocks and hard places is something Maleka taught me to do. Our time together was far too short, but thank you darling child for allowing me into your heart.
We should pay physicians for time spent engaging patients in conversation, instead of rewarding them for checking boxes on a computer screen. Physicians were trained to care and comfort people, not chase blood pressure numbers and pain scale scores. Changes masquerading as meaningful have only increased physician workload. We are widgets in the ever expanding assembly line. Do you think the MIPS will give us more time to practice medicine? If you believe it will, then I have a bridge to sell you.
Compensation at the “Big 5” ranged from $10.1 million for Humana’s CEO to more than $66 million for the CEO of United Healthcare in 2015. CEO compensation for Anthem, Aetna, and Cigna also fell within that range. Affordable health care has definitely helped people. But who exactly are we trying to help? I am not convinced it is the children growing up in America today.
In 2010, the President put together a Task Force on Child Obesity. These so-called “experts” who reformed school lunch guidelines decided to offer only low-fat milk or skim chocolate milk (with its added sugars) at school and removed whole milk from the menu. Guess what? Not ONE member of the Obesity task force was an MD, let alone a pediatrician. Five of the 9 members were lawyers!
