Post by ck4829 on Sept 30, 2021 12:20:25 GMT
The U.S. Health Care System Isn’t Built for Primary Care
There is widespread agreement that the United States must expand and improve primary care in order to achieve better health outcomes at a lower cost. A report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) published last May concluded that primary care is the only medical discipline where a greater supply produces improvements in population health, longer lives, and greater health equity. This growing consensus is a good thing.
But current efforts to wring “value” from primary care by focusing on diagnostic algorithms and quality metrics reveal fundamental misunderstandings of primary care’s purpose. The attempts to apply processes and technology designed for subspecialty care to the delivery of primary care have proven insufficient to support the complex work of the primary care team.
Primary care is unique in health care. It cannot be managed the same way as other parts of health care where the emphasis has rightly been on streamlining and cutting waste from a bloated system. At the heart of primary care’s success remains a unique relationship between physicians and patients built on trust.
For centuries, medicine was more relationship than science. The invention of the stethoscope, and then antibiotics, began to add more tools to the doctor’s bag and pushed medicine toward becoming a more stoic science.
hbr.org/2021/09/the-u-s-health-care-system-isnt-built-for-primary-care
deepblueleague.freeforums.net/
There is widespread agreement that the United States must expand and improve primary care in order to achieve better health outcomes at a lower cost. A report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) published last May concluded that primary care is the only medical discipline where a greater supply produces improvements in population health, longer lives, and greater health equity. This growing consensus is a good thing.
But current efforts to wring “value” from primary care by focusing on diagnostic algorithms and quality metrics reveal fundamental misunderstandings of primary care’s purpose. The attempts to apply processes and technology designed for subspecialty care to the delivery of primary care have proven insufficient to support the complex work of the primary care team.
Primary care is unique in health care. It cannot be managed the same way as other parts of health care where the emphasis has rightly been on streamlining and cutting waste from a bloated system. At the heart of primary care’s success remains a unique relationship between physicians and patients built on trust.
For centuries, medicine was more relationship than science. The invention of the stethoscope, and then antibiotics, began to add more tools to the doctor’s bag and pushed medicine toward becoming a more stoic science.
hbr.org/2021/09/the-u-s-health-care-system-isnt-built-for-primary-care
deepblueleague.freeforums.net/