Month: May 2012

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Physicians as Educators

As I had mentioned in a previous blog, I have been attending meetings to stay abreast of the many changes in healthcare. One of these meetings was hosted by a hospital system. The hospital wanted to lay out their strategy to deal with the anticipated changes to the healthcare landscape.

One of their basic tenets rang true to me. Their goal was increase the number of patients that would choose their hospital by providing what they called “a differentiated patient experience.” This is something that Dr. Lesley Anderson and I strive to do every single day.

One of the most important roles that a doctor fulfills is the gatekeeper of information. Due to their expertise, doctors have the key to a vast amount of knowledge. They can enlighten a patient about their disease/problem and potential treatments. In the information world, they can direct patients to reputable sources of information and steer them away from unreliable sources.

This is one of the more challenging aspects to the job. First of all, education takes time. Performing a thorough evaluation, formulating a treatment plan, and answering the patient’s questions doesn’t leave much time for education. Secondly, it can be very difficult to explain medical topics at the appropriate level. Finally, it is well known that it is difficult to communicate more than 2 or 3 important facts in one office visit.

Dr. Anderson and I take our role as educator very seriously. The practice’s website is full of educational content. Even this long-running blog, initiated by Dr. Anderson, is an attempt to educate our patients about issues that do not fit nicely into a disease-defined box.

However, we can do better. We are actively pursuing educational tools to supplement our patient’s office experience.  We anticipate adding to the current educational content with both commercially available content and some “homemade” offerings.  I have been emailing informational links to patients that speak to their unique musculoskeletal problem. With an eye to making this interaction more robust, we are looking at new software to facilitate communication and dissemination of information. In the spirit of exploring social media and medicine, I have started a professional facebook page www.facebook.com/pages/Robert-Purchase-MD/148246755251988?ref=tn_tnmn. It allows me to explore musculoskeletal topics in a completely different way. Hopefully, it is a non-traditional source of medical information that benefits the community at large.

Dr. Anderson and I have always been fully committed to our role as educators. It has always been and will remain key to our attempts to provide high quality orthopedic care and a differentiated patient experience.

-Robert J Purchase, MD

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A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

Unless you are living under a rock, you are aware that there is a veritable revolution going on in healthcare. Many forces are converging to change the way healthcare is delivered in this country. There are many stakeholders; physicians, hospitals, drug companies, insurance companies, etc; who are anxious about how these anticipated changes will affect their future.

In an attempt to stay abreast of these changes, I have recently attended two meetings in as many days, one hosted by an insurance company and another by a hospital. At each meeting, I heard the same quote, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” I had heard it before, but the quote rang out to me on both instances. In the setting of a business meeting where one group is discussing its plans to outperform another group, it initially seemed out of place. Eventually, I was able to see its veracity and relevance.

The phrase has been mistakenly attributed to John F. Kennedy, but it was in common use by a regional New England Chamber of Commerce prior to JFK’s speech. The phrase suggests that each individual that makes up an economy benefits when the economy, in general, improves. It may apply to medicine as well as macroeconomics.

Health care reform is supposed to improve the delivery of health care in this country. If this goal is attained, it will benefit all those who participate in healthcare, both patients and providers. Out of this painful and anxiety-provoking process, I hope that we will have a healthcare system that is more transparent, better at its primary task, friendlier, and more financially sustainable.

In our country, many societal goals are achieved through competition. One group tries to differentiate itself from another. This motivates the other group to do the same. And in the end, both groups are better as a result.

I wish I had a crystal ball into which I could peer and see the future structure of healthcare. As a small business person, I would then know exactly how to change and grow to fit into the coming reality. But alas, I have no such insight into the future. Instead, I will continue to attend meetings in order to stay informed and “ahead of the curve”. But I will do so with the belief that a rising tide lifts all boats.

-Robert J Purchase, MD