Patient Centered Care and how Health IT lets doctors listen

Healthcare Reform Should Start with Primary Care

As I have been advocating for the last year technology actually allows medical providers more time to spend with patients, lets them provide better care that is patient focused and results in higher quality outcomes while increasing their incomes in most cases.

Today on the front page of the business section of the New York Times is a great article discussing many of the same topics.

doctors spend more time with patients, emphasize prevention and education to keep them healthy and can handle many medical problems without referrals to specialists.

Here in Seattle I belong to a clinic that uses the Medical Home model and my former employer Group Health Cooperative is rolling out the same model to all of their primary care Physicians and Providers across the State. You can read about those two models in a great article in the Seattle Times. Technology allows small practices to compete with larger multi-speciality centers by putting the tools right into the hands of providers at the point of care.

With big pharma and insurance pulling out the stops to block the public option it would make sense to provide everyone with primary care under this new model and leave insurance to cover the high cost episodic care.