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Here's a solution: Let doctors be doctors and not glorified algorithmic-assembly-line workers. Incentivize transparency through something better than Yelp revie
by celdon25 4y ago
Here's a solution: Let doctors be doctors and not glorified algorithmic-assembly-line workers. Incentivize transparency through something better than Yelp reviews. Incentivize diagnostic outpatient facilities, make them more accessible and discoverable. Especially through telemedicine if possible, but make sure they can be seen in person by someone competent if needed.
I'm sure I'll get downvoted here for this part, but government shouldn't be micromanaging care standards, even through a proxy like medicaid and medicare claim criteria. Let the citizens regulate the system instead, and government's job should be to make it easier for them to do so.
Yes, transparency can come through price lists, but prices can never go down until quality goes up first. It's just like code quality: If it's bad, you'll have to spend more time dealing with technical debt than it would have been to invest in the quality up front. Bad medical care breeds more complicated patient situations, and the rate of seriously ill patients increases as a result. Supply cannot keep up with demand.
Analyzing price lists, shaming providers into lowering prices, etc., will not solve this, nor is that idea even novel. But it may be useful as a single part of a more comprehensive strategy to solve the root of the problem.
It's great for business, especially since Michael Moore's documentary made it politically incorrect to deny medical claims for terminally or seriously-ill patients. Still bad for life expectancy, but we'll probably need another "groundbreaking" documentary before the country really wakes up to the scheme.
And for Christ's sake, stop training doctors to ask "what are your symptoms" (when they are already reasonably aware of what the type of issue is), and use more yes/no questioning about specific symptoms. If doctors can't be trained fast enough to be able to do even that, I'd think about fixing that, too.
- cycomanic 4y ago> And for Christ's sake, stop training doctors to ask "what are your symptoms" (when they are already reasonably aware of what the type of issue is), and use more yes/no questioning about specific symptoms. If doctors can't be trained fast enough to be able to do even that, I'd think about fixing that, too. I think you really don't understand enough about why these things get asked. Yes Gp work often seems like glorified flowcharts at first glance (especially if you only look at some of their study material), but once you dig into it (I helped my partner study for an exams and get to hear her stories every day), you realise the huge amount of background information that can flow into a diagnosis. Asking the patient about their symptoms is an important part of gathering the history and can not be done just with yes or no questions.
- celdon25 4y ago> Asking the patient about their symptoms is an important part of gathering the history and can not be done just with yes or no questions. I agree, but that wasn’t what I was arguing against. Absence of any yes/no question is what I was referring to. And I’m not sure your argument is a good one. Things you do in the classroom or other training are intended to overprepare you, and are not supposed to mirror real life. While I did rebuild and scale (as a technical owner) an exam platform later used by millions, I am only mentioning that ironically. Appeals to authority tend to be pretentious, and serve to prop up an even more dangerous myth that professionals always know what they are talking about.