25 April 2013
Primary Care Watch (American Edition)
Media critiques of circumstances for primary care providers
are on the rise,
doubtlessly as a result of the soon to be implemented A.C.A.
Here is one illustration:
"Primary care is highly respected here.
That's not the case anymore in America," said [Grady] Snyder.
"In the United States, health care
has become more about the business of making money.
The personal side of medicine is going away."
In fact, Snyder said he wouldn't be surprised if more primary care
doctors in the U.S. look for opportunities elsewhere.
His own contract expires at the end of June
but he's renewing it for another two years.
Much of the critique seems to be directed at hospital profits,
regardless of quality care.
The Washington Post, for example, observes in a blog post:
The study underscores how ludicrous the incentives are
in the American health care system, generally paying doctors
for each medical service they provide, even if some of that care
is the result of a surgery gone wrong.
“If you personalize this and a relative is having heart surgery,
which gets complicated by pneumonia, I don’t think we would want
a hospital’s profit to go up as a result of that pneumonia,”
said study co-author Barry Rosenberg,
a partner in Boston Consulting Group’s health care practice.
The study does not imply that hospitals intentionally
complicate surgeries to bring in more revenue.
Most surgeries, about 95 percent, go off without a hitch.
What it does suggest to the surgeon, writer and Harvard professor
Atul Gawande is that hospitals now see little reason
to invest in technologies that would reduce complications
when the only prize at the end would be lower income.
Steven Brill's essay "Bitter Pill" publish by Time Magazine
is yet another example - and a very good one at that.
But maybe - just maybe - there is another question
we should be directing at media outlets.
Where were you before this?
Oh, sure, there were some opinion columnists who took stands
on these issues. And the medical and scientific press
have been discussing these problems for decades.
But the sad reality is that these healthcare problems
have been recognizable and growing for decades.
Sociologists, historians of medicine, doctors and surgeons,
and medical consumers have been talking about these issues
for decades.
But how often have major media outlets stated
"our healthcare is the best in the world for those who can afford it"
or "healthcare access and quality in America
when compared to other nations declined again"
without bothering to go deeper.
If you don't remember,
just revisit commentaries and analysis of Michael Moore's Sicko
to see how willing mainstream and non-mainstream media outlets were
to address in a rigorous way points raised in Moore's documentary.
Recall these remarks?
http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Movies/07/10/gupta.sicko/
