July 19th, 2011 by DrRich in Health Policy, Opinion
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In his last post, DrRich pointed out to his PCP friends that their chosen profession of primary care medicine is dead and buried – with an official obituary and everything – and that it is pointless for PCPs to waste their time worrying about “secret shoppers” and other petty annoyances.
It is time for you PCPs to abandon “primary care” altogether. It is time to move on.
Walking away from primary care should not be a loss, because actually, primary care has long since abandoned you. Whatever “primary care” may have once been, it has now been reduced to strict adherence to “guidelines,” 7.5 minutes per patient “encounter,” placing chits on various “Pay for Performance” checklists, striving to induce high-and-mighty healthcare bureaucrats (who wouldn’t know a sphygmomanometer from a sphincter) to smile benignly at your humble compliance with their dictates, and most recently, competing for business with nurses.
This is not really primary care medicine. It’s not medicine at all. It’s something else. But whatever it is, it’s what has now been designated by law as “primary care,” and anyone the government unleashes to do it (whether doctors, nurses, or high-school graduates with a checklist of questions) now are all officially Primary Care Practitioners.
What generalist physicians (heretofore known as primary care physicians) need to realize is that “primary care” has been dumbed-down to the point where abandoning it is no loss; indeed, it ought to be liberating to walk away from it.
The beauty is that Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Covert Rationing Blog*
July 2nd, 2011 by Happy Hospitalist in Health Policy, Opinion
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Over the last few years, you may have heard a lot about the value of checklists in ICU medicine and their ability to reduce mortality, reduce cost and reduce length of stay. But a recent study took the concept one step further and suggested that checklists by themselves may not be effective unless physicians are prompted to act on the checklist.
As reported in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Journal, a single site cohort study performed at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine’s medical intensive care unit compared two rounding groups of physicians. One group was prompted to use the checklist. The other group of physicians had access to the checklist but were not prompted to use it.
What they found was shocking. Both groups had access to the checklist. However, patients followed by physicians who were prompted to use the checklist had Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist*
May 12th, 2011 by GruntDoc in Humor, True Stories
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Laugh if you want, this helps my life, at least at work.
For months after starting my current gig, I would sometimes get to work with everything in all my pockets, and sometimes not.
I’d forget my ID, or my pen, or my phone, or my…well, there you go.
Then my OCD started to kick in, and, a Mental Checklist was born.
I now have to get 6 things, and set them on the table or I screw it up every time.
- ID
- stethoscope
- my phone
- work phone
- pen
- sharp stick (I’ve written about this before, but cannot find it. You should search an ER blog for the word ‘knife’ and then wonder why you bothered).
Last week I apparently went against the checklist, and halfway through the shift realized I’d lost my ID. Of course, after about a combined half-hour of fruitless search I gave up, and found it in my bag on the way out. Geez.
Yeah, it sounds stupid. But if it’s stupid and it works, it’s not stupid.
*This blog post was originally published at GruntDoc*
May 11th, 2010 by JessicaBerthold in Better Health Network, Health Tips, Opinion
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Medicare has a handy guide to help patients and their caregivers take control of the discharge planning process. It might be good for hospitals to have a stack of these at the ready and a plan to make sure every patient gets one:
Planning for your discharge: A checklist for patients and caregivers preparing to leave a hospital, nursing home, or other health care setting
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*
