If you follow health news, one thing is clear. We must never ask a doctor how to fix healthcare. MDs say strange things about patients and medical supplies that do not sound like system-speak. Therefore, they must be mistaken, biased or arrogant.
Dozens of articles prove that doctors do not even follow guidelines. If we listen to media and politicians, we might wonder whether doctors know how to practice medicine at all. Physicians are the last people with ideas to improve medical services.
Even so, the Ontario Liberals found a doc who’s practiced everywhere except Canada to promote their grand design. Only he can be trusted. He knows.
Solutions
Everyone has ideas about Medicare, but no one says doctors should lead.
The Conference Board of Canada suggests we need family health teams, IT, pay for outcomes, more elder care and focus on prevention. Others say doctors should just stop over-prescribing. One group thinks we might try to cut care at end of life. Another tells us to build care networks. And nurses want more power, and more nurses.
Americans print their own solutions: Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal. The WSJ article puts one paragraph at the end about physicians setting rules for care, but that’s it. Organizations like the Institute for Healthcare Improvement seem to agree.
Canadian Experts on Healthcare
Canadians trust Roy Rowmanow when he talks about changes to healthcare. A lawyer and former NDP Premier of Saskatchewan, Romanow carries more weight than any physician. Maybe it rubbed off of Tommy Douglas, another former NDP Premier of Saskatchewan, who held social views that most of us shun.
Would lawyers ever accept a physician as the national expert on the legal system? Would dentists accept pontifications about dentistry from medical docs?
Doctors Should Lead Medicine
Physician organizations should directly advocate for physician leadership and sharply critique system mismanagement. Here are previous posts on this theme:
Leadership: Who’s in Charge of Medicare? (Not doctors!)
Myth: Physicians Lead Medicare
Over-Regulated Medicare Stifles Innovation
Canadian Chaos: Medicare’s Misaligned Incentives
How to Fix Medicare: If Publicly Funded, Then Privately Run
Medical Anarchy, Mindful Structure
Physicians must speak up. They know how to fix healthcare. Doctors need to figure out how they want things to change and then advocate strongly.
Doctors should lead medicine, not politicians. Not bureaucrats. Not nurses. Not lawyers.
Patients expect that dentists lead dentistry and lawyers lead the judiciary. Doctors must fight to regain the leadership they’ve lost. Patients deserve no less.
photo credit: ottawacitizen.com
Shawn….in my nievete I believed that Docs did play a major role in setting Medicare parameters. Merrilee explained the real situation some time back. I would hazard to say most Canadians are of the same belief. That’s why Docs are the heavies wanting pay increases and rail against govt when they attempt to safe money. After all it’s you guys that are the problem and govt goal is to bring you back in control. Newspapers print articles that lead Canadians further astray of who is making the rules and the cause of out of control expenditures.
This article and many others you’ve written need to be printed in major newspapers and covered in more social media outlets. The public simply doesn’t know. Now the challenge is how will docs collectively get this message out to patients. Office handouts, office posters….everyone has lots of office time to read literature as docs are backed up. What better place for information of what’s happening.
Good work as usual Shawn
Thanks so much for your thoughtful comment, Don.
I agree. We need to spread this information. National newspapers have nothing to gain by identifying one group to lead. Too many readers hail from the crowd of other professionals involved in providing care. Nationalized industries end up with ‘stakeh0lders’ that must all have an equal voice. Real businesses would go under with the same approach.
I sure appreciate you taking time to read and comment!
Shawn
The pervasive thought process amongst government and a lapdog media is that the hard working doctors are what is wrong with health care and doctors are why health care is so expensive. The media cannot be bothered to dig deep enough to figure out that if doctors are less expensive then wait lists balloon and people go without doctors. The public believe what they red and what they hear. Unfortunately, those who are supposed to represent doctors are silent and do not respond to the propagated misinformation.
The OMA and CMA are too proud to talk about fees and what they actually are. If the fees for appendectomies, lacerations, counseling fees and usual family practice visits were ‘out there’ and everyone knew about them then it wouldn’t be so much of a reach to see that physician services are incredibly undervalued and poorly paid and that docs actually make money for working hard.
I am not too proud. I have it posted everywhere – what they fees are now and what they were in 2012. Patients are aghast. They are apologetic. Very few ask for more than one problem per visit to be dealt with. I know the schedule of benefits is a ‘public document’ but the medial and public cannot possibly figure it out. Simplify it and get it out there!
The fees are what they are…government has decided what it will pay us. But that does not mean that we have to accept it and how we are dealt with. It is time for our representative bodies to get the word out that how we are dealt with is unacceptable. And it is time to deal with the legislative processes and regulatory bodies that bind us through the courts. It may take 5 or more years but it will let government know that we are serious and are no longer willing to accept being pushed around and they will no longer dealt with us with the usual impunity.
Great comments, Paul!
I love to hear your passion for a 5 year campaign to free doctors from government hegemony. It’s exactly what we need. I fear politicians will dole out some more money to keep us quiet. Then we’ll toddle along because, “It’s not so bad. People complain too much.”
Publishing fees scares doctors because they feel guilty for working hard and earning a good income. Even a clerk at Tim Hortun’s makes a solid income working 100 hours per week. Nurses can make close to $200k with the same approach.
Some think everyone should get the same income regardless of effort because everyone works hard. Marxist ideology runs deep in socialized democracy.
Having said all this, I agree with your approach of posting your fees. We all should do it.
We need legislative change. Doctors forced to work under a monopoly goes against every principle of a free and democratic society. Physicians should be allowed to offer their services in any way that best meets patients’ needs. Forcing MDs to go unemployed because the monopolistic, all-powerful state decides it won’t pay for operating rooms is beyond cruel to the patients waiting to get care.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read and comment!
Shawn