Medical care has stopped making sense.
Patients are unhappy and physicians are burned out. Longer appointments are a thing of the past. Patients are limited to one or two medical concerns during these short visits, requiring return visits to complete care. Physicians often don't have the time to get to know their patients well. This may result in extra tests and or unneeded medications.
How did this happen?
Visits are short and rushed in order to cover office expenses and make up for increasing paperwork. Primary care physicians spend over 1/6 of their hours on paperwork, a situation made worse by electronic medical records (EMR’s). 1 Medicare, Medi-Cal and insurers continue to add new rules and regulations that require ever greater office staffs and more and more hours of physician time away from patient care. 2 Medical practices in California in 2001 spent 61% of their office overhead dealing with billing and insurance and this is getting worse. 3 The average primary care physician cares for about 2,300 patients, even though a provider should reasonably care for only about 1,400 patients. 4 Small practices are closing because they can’t afford the overhead even though they provide higher quality care. 5
This is a bad system but it’s the only way a physician can practice medicine in America--if she accepts insurance.
Medical care can make sense.
Dr. Bassler does not bill any insurance, including Medicare or Medi-Cal. She doesn’t have to waste time on unnecessary paperwork. She doesn’t need to hire office staff to deal with insurers. In fact, she doesn’t need office staff at all.
Dr. Bassler sees fewer patients but spends more time with each. H er practice is centered around the important things--health optimization, disease prevention, chronic disease management and coordination of care. Her appointments are flexible, to ensure the time necessary to address all of your health care needs. Phone consultations and home visits are available for established patients.
Patient privacy is increased because her office is outside of Mammoth Hospital and her medical records can only be accessed by Dr Bassler and Dr Swisher.
This is medical care that makes sense!
3 http://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12913-014-0556-7
4 http://www.annfammed.org/content/10/5/396.full
5 http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/early/2014/08/08/hlthaff.2014.0434.abstract