Healthcare - the vision « The Witch Doctor

Posted by: Witch Doctor | January 19, 2008

Healthcare - the vision

MAYO GIVES CREDIBILITY TO EXPRESS CARE RETAIL CLINICS

The Mayo Clinic is poised.

It will open a Mayo Express Care Clinic in a shopping centre in Minnesota.

It will be staffed by nurse practitioners.

Family medicine physicians (GPs) will support.

Sounds like the nurse practitioner is the gateway to the doctor.

Sounds like the doctors will assist only if the nurse practitioner thinks it is necessary.

Sounds familiar.

Dosn’t it, My Black Cat?

WHO NEEDS DOCTORS?

Market experts applauded the move by this “respected institution” as visionary.

Doctors, patients, and all health care workers in the UK will need to grapple with this.

This is healthcare as a global commodity as was referred to in The Tooke Report.

It is not going to go away.

It is much bigger than the medical profession.

Healthcare is a bottomless pit.

A market can easily be created.

It is a lucrative business.

My Black cat thinks a market is being carefuly created in the UK, using the power of suggestion.

Don’t you, My Black Cat?

Rotund demand with Lean resources is the way forward to maximise profit.

Yes, some senior medical staff are making their name in “Leaness” following the Toyota example.

Brownie points will be collected by them.

But I’ll bet most of them have not yet grasped the real agenda.

These “head in the sand,” senior doctors.

A DOCTOR - OSTRICH HYBRID

Just like the agenda behind MMC/MTAS was overlooked.

Ostriches, one and all!

What do you think, My black Cat?

“Primary care is going retail,” noted Devon Herrick, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas. “Patients are acting more like consumers and demanding convenient access to a health care provider, without having to make an appointment a week in advance and drive across town, only to wait in a doctor’s office.

“Having a respected health care system run these facilities gives patients–and the concept of retail medicine–more legitimacy,” Herrick added. “It also helps the hospital to extend brand awareness in the minds of patients.”

Brand awareness indeed!

Ugh!

a red apple ……………………

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Responses

I think that the MDs are threatened by nurse practiitoners who can diagnose, treat and monitor patients as well as they can. Yes, people are tired of driving across town and waiting for a hour to see a rushed doctor who can’t take the time to listen. I understand time constraints but truly listening to your patients makes a difference. Nurse practitioners are getting just a busy and must make sure that we don’t fall into that rush mode too. Nice blog!

By: NPs Save Lives on January 19, 2008
at 1:50 am

Thank you for passing by, NPs Save Lives.

It may well be that some MD’s feel threatened by nurse practitioners but I have never met any doctors in the UK with this concern. Irritation - yes - because some basic nursing duties are not always performed to a proper standard while nurses act up doing the jobs of junior doctors while thousands of junior doctors are going abroad because of lack of available training posts. Senior doctors too are being siphoned out of the system to go through increasing numbers of bureaucratic hoops on a daily basis.

Historically and culturally healthcare is very different on both sides of the Atlantic. Most of the UK want to see the NHS survive troubled times caused by a dwindling of a sufficiently trained work force, feminisation issues and an aging, sicker population. That is the main concern of the medical establishment over here. Most of us don’t see illness as a commodity.

Our government is trying to grapple with the problem in a strange way by getting everyone’s back up. Indeed there may be a bit of intentinal “divide and rule” at play just now between doctors and other health care professionals and even between doctors themselves.

I suspect a decade from now every single pair of available hands will be needed in healthcare. Hopefully there will still be some goodwill left by that time.

By: witchdoctor on January 19, 2008
at 10:41 pm

You hit the nail on the head when you said that we would need every available pair of hands soon. The average age of nurses is in the 50’s now. Most of these nurses will soon retire and without adequate nursing instructor staff, the future is dismal. We need to figure out a way to work together for the common good. We’ve lost that goal a long time ago. In the US, NPs and Docs are starting to work together a little better once they realize that the quality of care is the same. There are good and bad providers on both sides. Patients must be more responsible for their own health and be proactive about the quality of their care.

By: NPs Save Lives on January 20, 2008
at 3:07 pm

It’s very scary that we are copying this ‘health care going retail’ model.

If business gets its way then profit must come first, hence the cheapest and least trained workers will be the most profitable, and this is ensured by buttering up the state so that the regulation is limp.

The end product of ‘retail medicine’?

Shoddy expensive care.

By: garth on January 20, 2008
at 6:41 pm

ps NPs saves lives

the quality of care is the same, is it?

what’s your statement based on, hot air?

if you train people much less extensively to do a tricky job, more mistakes will be made, shame so many people seem to have had common sense bypasses these days.

By: garth on January 20, 2008
at 6:44 pm