We don't need more doctors
cnn.com
cnn.com
This doesn't seem like a minor thing:
* You don't need to have a relationship with a clinic to drop in. Changing or losing insurance doesn't change the clinics you can visit.
* Clinics are much faster than doctors offices.
* Clinics are much more flexible than doctors offices (again: you just drop in).
* Clinics are much, much cheaper than doctor's offices.
It's been said that a big part of our health care problem (after things like geriatric care) is that front-line services are being provided by hospitals to people with acute conditions, without insurance, who haven't had access to preventitive care. This sounds like a concrete step towards fixing that.
Actually, most of the time the patient just needs the sanity check and a prescription for something to alleviate the symptoms of their condition (i.e. a cough suppressant) enough for them to be able to get a decent night's sleep so their body can heal itself. Antibiotics are way overprescribed. Most of the time you don't need them.
Sure, but what about the remaining 10%? Even "proper" doctors often mess up the diagnosis - would the nurses do so much better?
Actually I wonder about the antibiotics, too. Wouldn't the need for antibiotics already signify a serious condition? I know there is the tendency to just prescribe them for everything (even virus diseases), but maybe that is just bad doctors? I don't think it makes sense to say "we don't need more doctors, because doctors are bad anyway", so I think we would still be stuck with "we need more good doctors".
What does the market say anyway? Do people want cheap nurses as an alternative to doctors? If so, I guess it would be fine, just let people choose where they want to go. But that is not necessarily what is happening. For example in Germany (very different system probably), the insurance company makes the rules about the kind of treatments they allow you.
Incidentally the few states where they are legal, the nurse clinics do very well.
What would happen if doctors only worked a 4 day, 40 hour work week? We would obviously need more doctors to make up the shortfall. There would be costs associated with that, but once we doubled the number of doctors, there may be some great financial and quality benefits for all parties. The only downside is most doctors would make less, but they would have still be upper-middle class and have a very comfortable life.
The doctors that make all the money do it in private practice, and they also arent the ones who are generally over worked.
Some specialties make more money than others, and those specialties attract doctors who value money. However, working for public hospitals in many places, or some specialties, you know you are working with people who do not value money (at least not as a primary motivator).
Remember -- the doctors who make the real money in medicine do it becuase they own their practice. This is just like working as an electrician or owning your own electrician company that employees 10 people. Owners make more.
A recommended read for anyone interested in the future of the industry.
Fair enough, and some of his ideas seem good, but the "guild mentality" is precisely what's keeping the supply of doctors down. There are regulatory burdens on both sides of the equation, and I don't think it's entirely clear which way things would move if they were relaxed.
"Rather than calling for more doctors, which would have been difficult for the government to impact anyway, what the country really needs are policies that pave the way to more avenues of care, which is well within the government's control."