Advocacy: the time is now.

摘要

Listening to Dr Joe Scherger1 recently, one understands that personal responsibility is required to create a functional health care system. "Creating" seems better than "reforming", for instance, because the functionality of the current system is in dire straits. Consider a restaurant where the patrons and the workers are dissatisfied, ratings are bad and the books show red ink for almost 60 years in a row. Any sensible owner would have started over years ago (getting out of the business not being an option). Dr Scherger describes some success rising from the ashes, however: "Idealized micro-practices" where physicians have increased career satisfaction and patients are so pleased they are actually paying out of pocket to belong! Proactive care delivered to "activated" patients who are empowered to have an impact on their own health care. The family medicine physician is employing (and perhaps is actually an agent of) what he describes as "disruptive technology," turning the tides of woe into currents of hope for frustrated patients and doctors.