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Guest Blog ... Richard L. Reece, MD, "Vitual Medicine: The Lever That Might Save Independent Practice"
Colleagues,
Thank you to MedTech-IQ member, Ronald J. Pion MD, for this link to an intriguing blog post by Richard L. Reece, MD. We'll start with these introductory words, and then link to the full blog below ...
ENJOY!
CC
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Virtual Medicine: The Lever That Just Might Save Independent Practice
Give me a lever long enough, and a prop strong enough, I can single-handedly move the world.
Archimedes, 1267BC-1212BC
The greatest innovation in the last 30 years is worldwide instant distribution of information. The Internet exemplifies how a small lever can move great weights, like healthcare.
Richard L. Reece, M.D., Innovation-Driven Health Care: 34 Key Concepts for Tranformation, Jones and Bartlett, 2007
Independent medical practice in America is in trouble. It is fragmented, with some 900,000 doctors – 300,000 primary care doctors and 600,000 specialists- practicing in disparate settings. These physicians are located in roughly 580, 000 locations. Some are solo, most are in small groups, and many are clustered around 125 academic medical centers, 100 integrated groups, and 5000 community hospitals.
Doctors are not unified – less than 20 percent belong to the AMA. Some 110,000 are members of Sermo – a social networking organization that tends to house dissident physicians. The MGMA is said to represent 300,000 doctors.
The Physicians’ Foundation, composed of roughly 650,000 doctors in state and local medical societies, in 2008 surveyed 300,000 primary care doctors. The doctors were unhappy. Many said they would leave practice if they could, and the majority said they would not recommend medicine as a career for their children.
Furthermore, doctors are swamped with work, with not enough time for patients, for leisure, or for mastering skills or technologies necessary for their work. Doctors are in short supply, 125,000 to 200,000 short by 2020-2025 depending on whom you ask.
What to do? No easy answers exist. Current reform bills do not fully address the demand-supply crisis. The crisis will be aggravated if 30 million more uninsured and when 78 million baby boomers start coming on board and flooding into doctor's offices and into hospital ERs and wards.
One lever that might lift the gloom and empower independent practicing doctors is virtual medicine. Virtual medicine has various definitions....
Read on at: http://medinnovationblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/virtual-medicine-leve...
Thank you to MedTech-IQ member, Ronald J. Pion MD, for this link to an intriguing blog post by Richard L. Reece, MD. We'll start with these introductory words, and then link to the full blog below ...
ENJOY!
CC
___________________________________________________
Virtual Medicine: The Lever That Just Might Save Independent Practice
Give me a lever long enough, and a prop strong enough, I can single-handedly move the world.
Archimedes, 1267BC-1212BC
The greatest innovation in the last 30 years is worldwide instant distribution of information. The Internet exemplifies how a small lever can move great weights, like healthcare.
Richard L. Reece, M.D., Innovation-Driven Health Care: 34 Key Concepts for Tranformation, Jones and Bartlett, 2007
Independent medical practice in America is in trouble. It is fragmented, with some 900,000 doctors – 300,000 primary care doctors and 600,000 specialists- practicing in disparate settings. These physicians are located in roughly 580, 000 locations. Some are solo, most are in small groups, and many are clustered around 125 academic medical centers, 100 integrated groups, and 5000 community hospitals.
Doctors are not unified – less than 20 percent belong to the AMA. Some 110,000 are members of Sermo – a social networking organization that tends to house dissident physicians. The MGMA is said to represent 300,000 doctors.
The Physicians’ Foundation, composed of roughly 650,000 doctors in state and local medical societies, in 2008 surveyed 300,000 primary care doctors. The doctors were unhappy. Many said they would leave practice if they could, and the majority said they would not recommend medicine as a career for their children.
Furthermore, doctors are swamped with work, with not enough time for patients, for leisure, or for mastering skills or technologies necessary for their work. Doctors are in short supply, 125,000 to 200,000 short by 2020-2025 depending on whom you ask.
What to do? No easy answers exist. Current reform bills do not fully address the demand-supply crisis. The crisis will be aggravated if 30 million more uninsured and when 78 million baby boomers start coming on board and flooding into doctor's offices and into hospital ERs and wards.
One lever that might lift the gloom and empower independent practicing doctors is virtual medicine. Virtual medicine has various definitions....
Read on at: http://medinnovationblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/virtual-medicine-leve...
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