Do We Sometimes Make Things Too Complicated?

I know it’s not Friday yet (when I usually share fun cartoons), but I saw this cartoon shared by Pete Friesen and I couldn’t help but share it.

This parallels really well with this tweet I saw from ePatientDave as well:

Drugs have done amazing things. Look no further than all the lives saved by penicillin. However, sometimes we need to slow things down and consider all of our options (including drugs).

The problem right now is that there’s nothing really slowing things down for doctors and are care providers. Everything seems to just be speeding up.

I had a doctor today proudly share “I’m an internist can see 40 patients with rapid work on EMR side and also complete my MIPs clicks.”

He was trying to compliment his EHR software for working so effectively. However, you have to wonder what kind of care those 40 patients received and what kind of care they could have received if he only had to see 20. I’m not suggesting he gave them bad care, but I’m suggesting that the care would have been better if he only had to see 20 and not 40 patients. The problem is that doing so will cut his pay in half (literally).

This isn’t doctors fault specifically. They want to get paid for the work they do like anyone else. It’s why so many are excited by things like DPC (Direct Primary Care) and value based care. However, in terms of the later many are still skeptical and for good reason. Value based care could mean creating more of a relationship with a patient, but it could also mean more hoop jumping.

Maybe many of our stressed-out care providers could use some canine stress therapy as well.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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