Posted by garnet71 on June 1, 2009, at 23:13:38
In reply to Health Care $/quality: Great article, psychiatry, posted by desolationrower on May 29, 2009, at 0:16:45
"I think for the average community pdoc, a much better approach would be to work with a half dozen other pdocs. Each specializes in some area, like bipolar, or anxiety, or drug interactions, or whatever. That person reads every study on that area...Then they are assigned to the pdoc who specializes in their main problem. After doing the intake, that pdoc could frequently and especially if their are serious comorbidities or non-response to treatment, bring in some other one to discuss how to approach the problem."
This is a good idea. Maybe it would be better if more psychiatrists were to specialize in one strong area...some do specialize, but not to a great extent...but is it practical for doctors to collaborate? I don't know. And who is going to pay for the consult? I am always for interdisciplinary type approaches, for just about everything. It seems crazy that one specialist is an expert in neuro, while another in psych and another in vascular, for example, but no individual/profession to "link" everything together like our bodies are linked together.
New occupations can be created for that, sort of like how there's a lot of hybrid IT/business people now since new university disciplines have been created. Traditionally, IT people don't know anything about business and business people don't know anything about IT = poor management, wasted resources, lower profits, and an underutilization of technology. A lower bottom line.
Well from the top of my head, I know the US spends twice per capita-$6000 per person-than the UK on health care, but leaves 45 million uninsured. Not that all of them can't afford insurance...and health care costs are at $2 trillion now (1/6th of our economy), projected to double to $4 trillion (1/5th of our economy) by 2016. By 2050, not that an accurate estimate can be made, but still, total health care spending is forecasted to be 37% of US GDP (Congressional Budget Office). We will spend 37 percent of our economy just to live. Isn't that ironic?
There are sooo many things that can be done to curb costs. Models, management, technology, incentives, creative problem-solving approaches. It's taking so long for business to do anything. But the health care CEOs are making a ton of $, have little incentive to change. And it's rediculous policymakers have ignored this problem for so long. Everything is done for the now, never looking to the future except when it comes to defense. And the US spends less on defense than health care each year.
It probably was not a good idea to tie health care to employment in the first place. I guess back then people stayed at the same job for 50 years. But consumers w/insurance have little incentive to curb costs. For example, my buspirone was $75 at CVS where my doctor called it in. So I'm having it transferred to Rite Aid for $9 for the same script. If I had insurance paying for it, I would have just picked it up at CVS. Who cares.
And the rate of information is too much to keep up with the way medicine is practiced, and is too much for one person to learn in medical school to effectively treat and diagnose people. Clinical practice needs a total makeover, imo. In addition to all that other stuff, highly specialized "sub-doctors" will be needed too. I think we should create new health care occupations to work with MDs, not nurses but research and technology people.
I think the social entrepreneurs will figure it all out. But that eventually businesses will "steal" social entrepreneurship, somehow funneling it to profit organizations behind the veil of "social good" because money trumps all. Though some for-profits implement social good into their organizations because consumers are starting to care about how their products are made and want more profits to go towards more than corporate executives.
http://www.ashoka.org/social_entrepreneur
http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/skoll/What+is+social+entrepreneurship.htm
Interesting stuff. You got me off track, I have stuff to do. Enough of periphial stuff. Too much stuff to be iterested in. I just want to say the word stuff one more time.
Did you really read that whole article in that magazine? I didn't..lol.
poster:garnet71
thread:898211
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090531/msgs/898931.html