You the patient are really not the customer of your primary care physician. Since the insurer will determine whether and how much the physician will be paid for attending to your needs, you are largely a bystander in the relationship. The doctor’s customer has become the insurer.
Our system of care is definitely not customer-focused. Doctors truly believe that they have the patient’s best interests in mind and they do. But their work is not customer focused as it is in most other professional-client relationships. You wait long weeks and sometimes even months for an appointment (the national average is 20.5 days), spend long times in the waiting room and are frustrated that you get just 10-12 minutes with your doctor who interrupts you within less than a minute and who recommends you see a specialist but does not personally call the specialist to explain the issue nor to smooth the path for a speedy appointment. All of this because, in the case of primary care, the doctor must see 24-25 patients per day to meet overhead and achieve a personal income of about $170,000.
As for the insurers, you are not their customer either. Their customers are the ones who pay them – your employer or your government. And it shows – by our long waits on the phone, by the complex, often hard to understand paperwork and by the frustration when the insurance you thought you had does not cover your latest tests, x-rays or specialist visit.
So you are not the insurer’s customer nor are you the doctor’s customer. You are a mere bystander. This is hardly the type of contractual relationship you have with your lawyer, architect or accountant. In those situations, you pay them directly. Want more time? No problem, but you pay for it. Want telephone consultation? No problem, but you pay for it. Not so in medicine. You the patient cannot decide and ask for more time or ask to use of email or telephone. Because you are not paying for the time and your insurance will not do so either. It is just not your choice.
To be clear. Yes, you are paying the physician directly in the co-pays and the deductibles but it is still the insurer that determines whether and how much the physician gets paid. You just get to contribute whatever portion you are told.
Who is to blame for the current state of affairs? Each party looks to the other but perhaps each should hold up a mirror and take a close look. Nevertheless, here is what physicians think based on a recent survey. Ninety per cent say the medical system is on the wrong track; 83% are thinking about quitting; 85% think the patient-physician relationship is deteriorating; 72% do not think the individual mandate will lead to improved care; and 70% think that the single best fix would be reducing government intrusion. Further, 49% will no long accept Medicaid patients and 74% plan to stop accepting new Medicare patients. Finally, 80% believe doctors and other medical professionals are the most likely to help solve the mess.
So the paradox is that America has the providers, the science, the drugs, the diagnostics and devices that are needed for outstanding patient care. But the delivery of health care is truly dysfunctional. What is needed is fewer patients per PCP so that each gets the time and attention really needed. The PCP needs time to listen, to prevent, to coordinate chronic care and time to just think. This means increasing not decreasing the cost of primary care per person. An increase in costs, yes, but an increase that will dramatically lower the total cost of care. More effective preventive care. More attention to the complex chronic illness with fewer referrals to specialists. Better coordination of the care of those with chronic illnesses, enhanced prevention such that many chronic illnesses don’t develop. Spending the time to listen and become trusted as the healers that they could and should be — all leading to better care at much lower total cost.
A new vision for our system must make it a healthcare not just a medical care system. It must recognize the importance of intensive preventive care to maintain wellness. It must address the needs of those with chronic illnesses to both improve the quality of care while dramatically reducing the costs of care. And it must be redesigned so that the patient is the customer that he or she should be. And, critically, to make it work effectively, America needs many more primary care physicians – they are and should be the backbone of the healthcare system – who are able to offer outstanding preventive care, care for the vast majority of complex chronic illnesses, offer coordination for those with chronic illnesses and do it in a manner that is satisfying to doctor and patient alike – with true healing along with expert medical care. It’s doable but it means a rethinking of how our delivery system is structured and assuring that PCPs have fewer patients for more time each.
It is possible but it will require both doctor and patient alike to demand it. There are many ways to skin the cat but the most promising is direct primary care (membership/retainer/concierge) practices. More on this later.
My next post in this series on the crisis in primary care will be about today’s impediments to good primary care.