May 25th, 2011 by StevenWilkinsMPH in Health Policy, Opinion
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The short answer: No.
At least not in the context of a strong physician-patient relationship.
Many physicians have legitimate concerns about the prospects of having their salary or level reimbursement linked to patient satisfaction. I would too given the way most health care providers go about measuring and interpreting patient satisfaction data.
A major concern of physicians is the issue of patient requests – particularly the impact of unfulfilled (and unreasonable) requests upon patient satisfaction. According to researchers, explicit patient requests for medications, diagnostic tests and specialty referrals occur in between 25% to 40% of primary care visits. This figure is much higher when requests for information are factored in. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Mind The Gap*
July 12th, 2010 by BarbaraFicarraRN in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
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From KevinMD’s medical blog, guest post by Toni Brayer, M.D., shares a story where a team approach in medicine is critical for quality patient care.
Dr. Brayer writes:
“Medicine is a team sport and it is only when the team is humming and everyone is working together that patients can have good outcomes. Hospital errors, medication errors, poor communication between doctors and nurses are prevented by adherence to protocols that everyone follows. It takes laser focus, measuring outcomes and a great deal of hard work to ensure everyone is pulling together in a hospital. The fact that these bedside nurses take the time to work on error reduction and patient safety is really amazing. Have you seen how hard nurses work? My hat is off to these dedicated caregivers.”
Dr. Brayer is exactly right when she writes “medicine is a team sport.” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Health in 30*
April 19th, 2010 by StevenWilkinsMPH in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion, Research
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Hospitals today are aggressively buying physician practices in their local markets. Why? Hospitals want to solidify their referral base for inpatient and outpatient referrals as well as increase their negotiating power with insurance companies.
Over 50% of physician practices are now owned by hospitals according to the Medical Group Management Association. As such, many one-time private practitioners are now hospital employees.
Having done physician recruitment in a prior life, I know that before buying a practice that hospitals look at a variety of things including the practice’s patient volume, number of hospital referrals, estimates of patient turnover, and so on. One of the things we did not consider years ago in evaluating and buying a physician practice was the quality of the physician’s patient communication skills and supporting practices. I doubt that things have changed much since. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Mind The Gap*