God heals, and the Doctor takes the Fees?
Benjamin Franklin:?Poor Richard?s Almanack?, 1736.?
Maybe old Ben Franklin even recognized the beginning of a trend in healthcare. It?s not the fault of the doctors per se but healthcare is not always focused on?patient care, it?s business? big business. Non-profit hospitals used to be dedicated to giving appropriate healthcare to all, even those who could not pay. Now we see non-profit hospitals, formerly operated by faith based organizations, being turned into for profit corporate systems providing care to a community based on direction from share holders and management teams.
In Ben?s day the physician, more times than not, received payment in kind??from his patients. ?A basket of eggs or sack of potatoes from the garden for minor services. Possibly the chicken itself; a goat, pig or cow for more major transactions. If the patient couldn?t pay, or pay in kind, they usually provided service later on to repay the ?debt? of receiving treatment and to express their gratitude. I?m sure that most patients were more than happy to repay for appropriate health care services in that day and age, especially when they survived and got better.
Life was probably much easier before health insurance:
Although the concept of being protected through health care insurance is a great idea it?s contributed to a big business mentality. Third party payers and corporate insurance companies are in it to cut costs and make money, or at least not lose money.
Yes, healthcare is big business. We don?t see the family doctor working out of his home doing house calls much any more. They?re usually affiliated with a hospital or group practice of multiple physicians. We don?t see many ?mom and pop? pharmacies anymore either. We now have the Walgreens, CVSs, Walmarts and mail order pharmacy. All of them along with?pharmacy benefit management groups (PBMs) selling patient information to generate more revenue. ?And with this type of change we?ve seen the transition from real patient care focused practices to enterprises designed to ?drive? healthcare services and generate profits to satisfy stockholders. Is this truly in the best interest of the patient?
Patient care seems to get lost in the healthcare world today. Even the patient centered medical home model (PCMH), while touting the focus on patient care, is really designed to manage healthcare costs. Accountable care organizations (ACOs) and continuity of care organizations (CCOs) basic premise is to control healthcare costs. ?That doesn?t say much about patient care, does it. So when did we lose patient care and how do we get it back?
Having a mission statement does not mean fulfilling the right mission:
I don?t think that patient centered care is totally lost. But patient centered care must come from the individual providers. Now I?m not saying that this doesn?t happen. It just happens less often than it should. 
Those of us involved in healthcare, whether physicians, nurses, pharmacists or other auxiliary personal all need to be focusing what we do around the idea of what is best for the patient. Sometimes it means taking a stand for what is right for the patient, even if it?s not in the best economic interest of the healthcare machine.
Providers can be the stimulus that changes healthcare to patientcare. Focus on what is best for the patient in the long run. If the system is broken or fails to take care of people by following the usual and customary ground rules, changes need to take place. Decisions based on positive patient outcomes need to be made as opposed to decisions base merely on economic factors. Maybe if providers start doing this, with each patient, the system can be changed from within. One could only hope that by doing so we can change healthcare to patientcare.
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Source: http://healthrecordresources.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/why-its-called-healthcare-not-patientcare/
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