Crises in the Medical Arts: Returning Medicine to Patient Centered Care Giving.

A Canary in the Goldmine

If there was ever a time that doctors (including all care-givers) need to have and nurture quality face- to- face time with their patients IT IS NOW!

Under the Electronic Medical Records Mandate of 2014, all public and private healthcare providers and other eligible professionals (EP) were required to adopt and demonstrate "meaningful use" of electronic medical records in order to continue receiving Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements at their current levels.

Since then, doctors' visits have become depersonalized, more robotic and more perfunctory so that the traditional care giver has been transformed into a data entry expert merely listening and simultaneously recording patient responses to routine questions with eyes focused most of the time on the computer. 

Sadly gone is the traditional patient doctor relationship of old when caregiver would give 100% attention to the body language, facial expressions, emotions, vocal intonations, etc. of his patient. 

Gone is empathy.

Say Hello to de-humanized care giving----if you can even call it that. 

It's rush rush rush at the consultation as the health professional is under pressure to 'see' as many patients as possible in an hour to maximize reimbursements from the governmental single payer system....

But, let's pause a moment because there may be a solution on the horizon. 

To learn more stay tuned.