Martin Kanovsky, an internist in Chevy Chase, used to see patients every 15 minutes and worry at times about what he might be missing by moving so fast. In December, the 61-year-old doctor reduced his practice to a small pool of people who pay a premium for longer visits and round-the-clock access to him. “There’s no such thing as double-booking,” he said.
Janis Finer, 57, a primary-care physician in Tulsa, Okla., gave up her busy practice two years ago to care full time for hospitalized patients. The lure? Regular shifts, every other week off and a 10 percent increase in pay
Tim Devitt, a family physician in rural Wisconsin, took calls on nights and weekends, delivered babies and visited his patients in the hospital. The stress took a toll, though: He retired six years ago, at 62.
I saw my doctor last month, told him how much I appreciated him and asked him to let me know if he was retiring any time soon. He didn’t answer me.
Things are worse here in London. We have a theoretical 10 minutes but the GP (our term for physician = general practitioner) is always running late, sometimes very late. In a newspaper article a journalist referred to the ‘rushed, almost hysterical consultations’ with his GP. And in a recent conversation with friends we mused on the fact that to save time you are virtually stripping off as you step into the consulting room. This timely posting from WaPo reminds us that this takes a toll of doctors too. For myself, I would gladly pay a premium, even a realistic one, for more time and consideration.
Our general practioner “gate keeper” medical doctor in private practice in Rutland, Vermont, first announced that she was not a “gate keeper” with holistic (total patient responsibilitiy) but was a “family practioner.
The Vermont situation over the past several years have made it very difficult to be a private paractioner in our state.
This doctor ‘shut down’ her practice in Vermont and moved to Toronto, Ontario.
It took me over eight months to locate another family practioner in Vermont and this one is in a clinic but is still ‘my’ doctor.
No assurance however, to date, of “gate keeper” being part of his job discription.
Years ago, doctors of optometry in New York State had some status as practioners of external eye correction but their status was diminished to the the point of being “time clock punching robots” as the result of commercial pressures.
The same thing has happened to pharmacists.
I am also reasonably certain that medical doctors will more and more become “time clock punching robots” as the pressures of a radical Federal Government reduce them to the status of being “mere tools” of political ideology.
Political ideology which is merely the “construct” of a relatively few minds and which scorns empirical wisdom and scientifically derived knowledge.