In pursuit of better care for patients at lower costs- A reality .
There are so many people around the world who wants to reduce healthcare costs and are looking at numerable options to achieve this.
Primary care medicine is the frontline in health care provision. It serves to co-ordinate services, especially for those with chronic problems, and enables more effective longitudinal care of patients. The Institute of Medicine’s Committee on the Future of Primary Care definition of primary care is: “The provision of integrated, accessible health services by clinicians who are accountable for addressing a large majority of personal health care needs, developing a sustained partnership with patients, and practicing in the context of family and community.”
Benefits of Primary care centres
Familiarity: Knowing who you are is one thing, but knowing the intricacies of your health and wellness is another. And the latter is something a primary care provider offers you and your family. This knowledge and familiarity helps personalize your care and save time that may have previously been spent explaining medical history, personal caveats and who you are.
A primary care provider’s goal is to deliver the care that’s right for you — not employ a one-size-fits-all approach. Tailored health care is easier when you have a meaningful relationship with your provider.
Prevention and condition management : A primary care provider is responsible for screening all major health-related conditions. If you already have a chronic condition, your primary helps manage it and improve your quality of life. They screen for many things, including obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes. Also look at immunization records and help with regular immunization refills. Those refills are more difficult if you don’t have a primary care provider.
Benefits of patients and Doctors
For Doctors you always have a job. There’s more demand for primary-care physicians than ever before.
As a Doctor you never know what ailments and issues each day will bring. A steady stream of patients with complaints from mild to serious and spanning the body systems will keep you on your toes in terms of maintaining your diagnostic skills and intellectual engagement.
Prevention and treatment both happens at the same time as patients for well visits in addition to sick ones. This allows Doctors to take an active role in guiding health decision-making; monitoring medications and treatments; counselling on healthy eating, smoking cessation, and family planning; and screening for risk factors and health problems before symptoms manifest. Which all adds up to a big opportunity to improve the health and longevity of your patients by keeping them from getting sick in the first place?
The learning is huge for Doctors as they treat the whole patient. Primary-care docs have the opportunity to truly coordinate the healthcare of their patients. Even if a patient sees specialists for specific issues, you are the doc who knows the most about the patient’s history, medications, and overall health, and the physician most likely to identify larger problems or patterns. Big responsibility, but also big rewards in the patient relations and job satisfaction departments.
You build long-term relationships with your patients and their families. .
More skilled Doctors are seen in PHC as they are the first line of defence for patients – which mean that you see all the newest bugs and ailments first. Primary care physicians are the central players in treating everything from national flu epidemics to local Lyme disease upticks to widespread food poisonings and recalls. It’s a role that can be exciting and diagnostically challenging, and that is vital to the success of the healthcare system as a whole.
So now this looks exciting that the Primary care is the best way to take care of the patients.
The challenges PHC they face are not having good EMR -Electronic Medical record system in place approved by local statutory agencies developed specifically for their localised needs with strong authentication.
None of them are accredited by standards or are difficult to go thru them they have limited IT knowledge or training on systems is a show stopper.
If all the history of the patients are well managed and all health screening reports are updated many diseases can be cured at the PHC level itself and we can prove that prevention is better than cure.
Also if there are really sick cases which needs to be attended by secondary and tertiary care they can be referred with full file data to the hospital which ensures good continued care .
We are doing a similar pilot deployments in one of the Primary care centre and are seeing positive results already interms of Doctors and nurses being happy and using the system effectively. Hope we will make it happen and make affordable healthcare dream a reality .
In pursuit of better care for patients at lower costs enabling technology with patient in center.