Stephen C Schimpff's Blog Posts Tagged 'quality' (2)

We hear that doctors do not like “protocol medicine” – they do not want to follow a “cookbook” when every patient is different. It is not a good understanding of the issues.

 

Some years ago when I worked in a branch of he National Cancer Institute and then the University of Maryland Cancer Center, we admitted many patients with acute leukemia. The treatment approach including the necessary special tests to obtain, chemotherapy drugs, steps to prevent infection, prevent kidney…

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Today we mostly have prepaid medical care insurance with some co-pays and deductibles – both with commercial insurance and with Medicare. In other words, our insurance covers essentially everything from basic and routine care to the catastrophic. And the insurance pays out based on units of care – a visit, a test, a procedure, a hospitalization, a prescription. This creates a system in which providers (physicians, hospitals, drug and device companies, others) get paid for a unit of activity –… Continue