Podcast #17: Medicine At The Crossroads: With Dr. Marc Lippman (and me)
By
Leonard Zwelling
It is obvious that much has changed in the ways doctors deliver health care today—for the doctor and for the patient.
The tools physicians can use for diagnosis and treatment are wonders of science—MRIs, robotic surgery, powerful and targeted pharmaceuticals, and computerized medical records. But medicine has been corporatized with large business conglomerates owning huge, hospital-based practices with doctors on salary, seeing patients with time-limited visits, often typing into the impatient and unforgiving electronic medical record rather than looking at the patient. The patient’s history and physical exam are neglected by modern doctors who are not skilled in these basic practices that are vital to good patient care and accurate record keeping.
This has led to a devaluing of medicine as a profession, the decrease in camaraderie among physicians, and physician burnout. What was once a profession is now just a job.
For patients, obviously they benefit from all the technology and new drugs, but so many don’t have a regular doctor. So many feel disconnected from a doctor if they have one given the limits on the doctor’s time to spend with each patient. And doctors who have not had nurturing patient care behavior modeled for them cannot emulate what they have never seen.
Finally, we ask the big question, can the bad things that have entered clinical medicine be reversed? It will require new, patient-centered models of care. These new models should be formally compared with what the corporate leaders currently demand to demonstrate which model is best for patient outcomes, patient satisfaction, physician burnout, and financial solvency.
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