Medscape Psychiatry and Mental Health recently published an article on Saving Primary Care that certainly got my attention.

Trained as a primary care doc myself, I firmly believe that as a society, we’ve got our priorities screwed up and the value chain inverted. Primary care doctors are the gatekeepers and guides for how patients use the rest of the medical system, and therefore, they are the first line of defense.

The discovery of antibiotics was found to be a first line of defense, and it revolutionized the practice of medicine.  So would a robust, thriving, and reformulated practice of primary care.

Supporting and investing in primary care docs for the time they spend as PARTNERS with their patients would reap enormous benefits to everyone. The educating, guiding, coaching, and healing that can occur through a great relationship with your primary care doc should be the amongst the most highly compensated interventions, not at bottom of the heap. For those are the activities that result in people learning how to take care of themselves such that they avoid coming down with chronic, degenerative, costly diseases that over time eat up huge amounts of medical resources.

What’s emotional intelligence got to do with it? There’s got to be a fundamental shift in attitude that drives how our broken medical system is rebuilt.

Just as all of us individually need someone to give us primary care [after all, why do we seek intimate and primary relationships?], primary care practitioners should get our deepest respect, translated into status and monetary value.

[Isn't this a "duh" moment?  I mean, isn’t primary care called primary because that’s what it is? It’s PRIMARY. It’s IMPORTANT, listen up everyone! Yeah, I know I’m being repetitive and yelling, but it seems like the powers that be still don’t get it.  That's why I started Heart of Healthcare, to facilitate leaders in making these kinds of fundamental shifts.]

Healing requires compassion and empathy. And today, primary care in particular needs healing, if healing is to become a mainstay of health care. Truly, it needs resuscitation.  Soon. Healing, based in wholeness and compassionate caring, is what allows people to become healthier. Healthier people are what will drive health care costs down. I can’t make it any simpler than that, folks.

[I tell you, it really gets me, how the most important jobs in society get the lowest (or relative lowest) compensation, childcare workers, teachers, ministers of all denominations who tend to the Spirit, and primary care docs. This speaks poorly to how we measure success as a society and a culture, but this is a post for another time.]

Of course, we need the highly trained specialists who spend 12 years in training to come in as the knights in shining armor to save the day when needed [And yes, I also believe they should be well compensated.]

But when will we start to value that which society and healthcare system need to flourish – healthy people able to take care of themselves because they’ve been educated, guided, tended to, and cared for by physicians who are there specifically to provide that most fundamental connection, guidance, and education for health?

We each need someone to “stand by me”, always, always, always. Well, primary care docs are those folks in healthcare, whether they’re on active duty or on reserve. If we want them there, we need to stand by them.

And in that spirit, I invite you to take 5 minutes to watch and listen to this gorgeous video that was produced by the group “Playing For Change.” Listen to this every day, and your life will change!

Tags: compassion, Emotional intelligence, Healing, Primary care, rethinking healthcare

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Healthcare. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.