By Dr. Elizabeth Anderson
Dr. Elizabeth Anderson is a physician with Paramount Care Physicians and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine. Her office is located at 12011 Lee Jackson Memorial Highway in Fairfax.
Monday, March 16, 2015 – You may have read about the growing problem of physician burnout. Not only are the best and the brightest young people choosing other careers, but many doctors who have dedicated their lives to the profession are now selling or leaving their practices. There are now very real concerns about physician shortages. It’s a reality we must address; here in Fairfax County, and nationally.
I have been active in the Washington metro area for more than 20 years, and I have seen and been part of the changing landscape of medicine. I have adjusted to new ways of paying physicians, to the introduction of new technologies and to sweeping changes in regulation. It hasn’t always been easy. Until recently, I used to wonder whether I would make the same choice tomorrow as I did when I was in college.
I am not alone; concern over the future of medicine is a big issue in my profession. Instead of discussing interesting cases and being excited by the latest in medical innovations to help our patients, we are commiserating over the newest regulation limiting our ability to make sure that they get the care needed.
What is going on here? Well, to begin, the days of the independent family physician are long gone. There are some 3,000 physicians in Fairfax County, and the number that remain independent continues to dwindle. Health care today is big business and corporate structures are sometimes guided more by profit margins than what patients may want and need. This transition to an all-inclusive network comprising your “care team” comes at a price: Patients often have shorter visits, sometimes with physicians, but sometimes with “advanced practitioners” who are unknown to them and who spend a significant portion of the visit completing an electronic template to qualify for government financial incentives. Who benefits? Not patients and not doctors who truly know and care about them.
The questions we need to be asking are who is the advocate for the patient? Who explains the illness to the family? Who coordinates the specialists to be sure that the person is being treated and not just a collection of body parts and systems? Who is there to answer questions that frighten and concern patients and their families?
Will people trust an advice nurse they have never met but was assigned by an insurance plan? Will they trust a physician who is part of a giant “network of care” with a hospital at its center, but who clocks out at the end of the shift without a backward glance?
Patients deserve better. They deserve a doctor who knows them by name, who can remember their medical history without opening a chart or logging onto a computer. Why? Because there is a relationship of trust, requiring a knowledge of the patient, that we call the doctor-patient relationship, and it is real. In recent years, this relationship, which is integral to the care of the individual, stopped meaning anything. We moved away from simple communication and human understanding, which have been at the core of medicine since its origin. It is time to bring this essential element of medicine back to the forefront.
There are a few strategies for doing this and options that will work for all patients. The one that I have chosen is concierge medicine. I recognize that it may not meet the needs of every patient because it requires an extra fee (which averages out to about the cost of a daily fast food lunch), but it’s a fee that covers important healthcare features. These include convenience, greater availability and assurance of the important doctor-patient relationship that patients can’t expect from an impersonal healthcare corporation. It is a valuable option for patients who have chronic or complex illnesses and even for those who simply want to maintain a personalized relationship with the doctor of their choice.
I recognize healthcare is changing – and that we need to change with it. I can do that. But I want to make sure that as we change, we ensure that patients and doctors have choices in the way they give and receive healthcare. If we can do that, we’ll have a system that works better for all of us.
Dr. Elizabeth Anderson is a physician with Paramount Care Physicians and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine. Her office is located at 12011 Lee Jackson Memorial Highway in Fairfax.
