Healthcare Daily Digest for Tuesday, 2 April: The Future of Healthcare Seems Short on Doctors

Since we’re all diagnosing ourselves based off of television commercials anyway (“Ask your doctor if [insert drug with name that sounds like a dance you're too old to do] is right for you”), what need primary care physicians? Aren’t they just the annoying middleman who wants us to turn our head and cough? Stand sans pants in chilly exam rooms? Prodding us in our proddables, poking us in our pokeables?

“The adoption of the accountable care organization (ACO) model is changing the way hospitals evaluate their structure, roles, activities and benchmarks. While much of the buzz is about the IT tools and investments ACOs are driving to support population health management and collaborative care, business process change is the biggest challenge facing healthcare providers today.”

That’s the opening of a press release you’ll no doubt find in several venues (because that’s how press releases work; I just peeled back a layer for you in the “how your sausage is made” of editorial content) looking at the future of Medical Device Industry.

There are sentences and phrases that should give one pause: “With healthcare shifting to be more like traditional service industries” for one. “Lesser trained clinical personnel” for another. One of the ways fast food companies keep their costs low is by automating pretty much the entire system. This means less money spent on training (if you need trained on how to push a button, you may want to think about other career opportunities — like, say, cadaver) since no single task, from the fry machine to defrosting McNuggets, takes any skill whatsoever.

That’s what I think about when I read things like the aforementioned “traditional service industries” and “lesser trained clinical personnel.” But is that the best direction for medicine? Do you want to get medical care from someone who couldn’t hack it at Wendy’s?

I guess what I’m saying is: Kloz is still out with a kidney stone and I’ve been thinking, selfishly, a lot about my own healthcare and I think I’m okay paying a little extra for a real doctor who can run a procedure without a robot.

Tuesday’s headlines:

“We’re Willing to Try ANYTHING,” Said Local Republican: “As Republican leaders try to woo Latino voters with a new openness to legal status for the nation’s illegal immigrants, the party remains at odds with America’s fastest-growing ethnic community on another key issue: healthcare.”

UHC Universal Health Care Shut Down: “After feds raided Universal Healthcare’s offices and shut down the HMO, customers had until April 1st to find new coverage.” There’s video, too, that starts automatically and I HATE that.

That Counts as a Profit, Right?: “A federal appeals court has overturned an $11 million judgment against an Atlanta-based healthcare company with diagnostic testing facilities in 13 states.”

Speaking of Profit: Here’s Your Get-Rich-Quick Scheme for Today: “This article is part of our series that uses the idea of bracketology and the NCAA Tournament to pick a well-diversified portfolio to beat the market. Click through to the first article in the series, ‘Using Bracketology and the NCAA Tournament to Pick Stocks,’ for a description of the analogy and how it can be used to pick winners outside the sports arena.”

Wow! One Whole Day!: “Stamford Hospital is among other national, state and community organizations that will highlight advance healthcare decision-making on National Healthcare Decisions Day, April 16.”

Get Financial Advice from a Stranger with Flattering Bangs: “Personally, I’m in the spend-to-save camp. It’s why I put extra money on my mortgage payment every month–it costs me more in the short-term but will save me thousands in interest over the life of my loan.” Read the rest to see how she connects that to healthcare.

From the “Self-Evident” Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler: “Threats cannot make healthcare workers more compassionate.”