Physicians like those should speak up for medicine, and argue in favor of paying doctors to spend time with their patients. They should fight against a payment system that has created perverse incentives that encourage unnecessary treatments. Let’s make it as lucrative to talk to the patient as it is to do to the patient.
A physician who gets to know the patient can discuss difficult subjects such as end-of-life care while the patient is still relatively healthy — often sparing them the pain and huge expense of spending their last days of life in an intensive care unit. Physicians with good relationships with their patients can guide them away from futile therapies whose only proven efficacy is making money for drug companies, hospitals and doctors. How wonderful if all our lobbying societies would agree that our goal should be to fulfill Dr. Peabody’s old maxim, and not to simply restate it generation after generation: “The secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient.”
Dr. Verghese understands. Actually most internists understand. We know the difference between the art of medicine and our payment system.
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I must support this idea. To get a feeling of how a physician who doesn’t know a patient feels, ask personal questions of your tangential acquaintances. Such as if they have ever used drugs, or practice risky sexual practices.
What physicians do is not easy, and not comfortable all of the time. Keeping physicians’ pain down while they practice is important in keeping physicians for the future.