Saturday, February 16, 2013

Primary Care Doctor Love

Instead of paying doctors to see more patients, let's pay them to see fewer but spend more time with them. The payoff is enormous. Better care, more satisfied patients, fewer medical malpractice lawsuits.

We can afford to pay doctors to spend more time with patients if we also ask them to treat appropriately. Base treatment on the clinical findings. This simple protocol will save hundreds of billions of dollars in healthcare costs if applied universally.

Most of what we call "waste" in healthcare is simply a function of defensive medicine, patient demands, or greed. Eliminate these with a national medical care network of healthcare providers, doctors spending more time with patients, and careful examination of medical billing to assure appropriate care.

A good healthcare IT program can flag most inappropriate treatment. Care managers care discuss the care with the provider to assure that the care is appropriate or not. If not appropriate, the care provider must be warned that they risk being dropped from the healthcare network and won't be paid for treating outside the network.

It is time that care providers to back control of healthcare.