corporate medicine isn't necessarily the best option

Reader comment on: Health Care Turning Point

Submitted by CA Doc (United States), Mar 3, 2010 12:53

"Not that the current American system is perfect, by any stretch. Even outside Medicare and Medicaid, health care maintains characteristics of what Mr. Battistella calls a "cottage industry." Where the trend in much of the rest of the economy is toward scale and consolidation – Wal-Mart, big law firms, big banks – "over 40 percent of physicians practice in groups with fewer than six colleagues while one fourth of all physicians practice solo."

Medicine may be struggling to get out of the "cottage industry" model, but comparing your physician to Wal-Mart is a perfect example of why medicine SHOULD NOT be practiced in large corporations. Does Wal-Mart actually care PRIMARILY about their employees or customers, or does it mostly care about the "bottom line"? I'd argue that, like ANY corporation, Wal-Mart's primary concern is for profits.

Should your physician be more worried about making money for a corporation by changing referral patterns to less skilled specialists that make more money for the employer? Should your physician's primary concern be saving $100 a year on your priscription that fails to prevent your stroke?

There is a group that we have helped to form to try to preserve the independant practice of medicine yet move medicine out of the "cottage industry" model. It is deserving of a look.

http://www.patientphysicianalliance.org/

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