DocBrain's Prescription for Healthcare

DocBrain is very angry about health care in America. Over-regulated, micromanaged, and underfunded, health care is less than it could be and you, the patients, are suffering for it. Solutions abound, all focused on increased micromanagement, more regulations, and less funding. Ask any health care provider (not a professor, but a real front line M.D. or D.O.) and you will get the true answers.

Barriers to dissemination of information

• If you have failed standard therapy for a condition or if your condition does not have a FDA approved treatment, your physician may not know what to do, even if there are treatments proven to be effective. Laws and policies prevent dissemination of this information except in certain specific circumstances.
• Most hospitals still depend upon handwritten notes. When DocBrain requested the option of typing a note, it had to go to a committee and it still has not been decided. DocBrain believes that typed notes are easier to read and will argue this with any naysayer.
• Asynchronous data transmission: emails, voicemails, text messaging are rarely used in health care and yet would be vastly superior to the current systems. The VORB (verbal order read back), is the closest thing most hospitals have to verifying orders, but wouldn't a written order (arguably not formatted to the chart), be more likely to be accurate?
• Virtual patient evaluation: If the doctor cannot be there, what about using a remote camera/microphone system? Everyone is so worried about security and privacy, but this issue can be reasonably solved with encryption. This should be the standard for immediate assessment.

Reimbursement issues

• McMedicine could be relatively inexpensive. You go to the clinic for hypertension. They check your pressure, adjust your medications, and you are on your way. But, what if you have found a lump in your breast? What if you are not feeling well? This is where McMedicine fails. You need a diagnostic evaluation. You need an explanation. McMedicine cannot do this. You need one-on-one service with someone who can figure out what is going on. There should be no skimping at this level.
• R and D We need newer and better diagnostic and treatment options.
• Reduce needless expenses. Malpractice is the biggest drain on the health care system and arguably the most useless. DocBrain believes that the oppositional positioning in malpractice cases leads to people becoming entrenched in their positions and care not moving forward. We also get crazy things, such as the increase in lethal c-sections due to pseudoscience lawsuits that blamed obstetricians for birth defects from vaginal delivery (a nod to John Edwards for this one). Furthermore, defensive medicine is extremely expensive.

When your doctor is busy filling out paperwork, you are not getting care. When that paperwork is not organized, no one can benefit from the success (or failure) of the treatment you receive. When information that could help you is suppressed, this cannot be a good thing. When doctors leave the profession, we all lose.