Doctor's Digest

Today we realize that communication skills can be taught, and learning them is not about being a nicer doctor; it’s about being a better doctor. The first formal studies of patient communications were done about thirty years ago, and they have slowly led to enormous changes in the medical school curriculum.

With the advent of consumer-driven healthcare, or CDHC, your patients may now find themselves in the unique position of making a lot more of their own medical decisions than in the past. The questions then arise: how prepared are patients to assume this responsibility? And how can they get the information they need to help them choose healthcare?

The American health insurance system faces the vexing challenge of supporting high-quality medical care while trying to control rising costs. In recent years, physicians have had to cope with an alphabet soup of insurance innovations, from HMOs and PPOs to DRGs and RBVUs. And now there’s still another ingredient in the mix: CDHC.

Are your patients turning into consumers? For a lot of people, the word “patient” implies sub-servience, while the word “consumer” acknowledges the important role that people can play inchoosing their own healthcare. Since physicians think of themselves as healers rather than sales people, this shift in terminology may represent a pretty revolutionary change in the way patients and physicians interact.

Volunteering is a wonderful way for a physician to reach new heights of personal satisfaction and growth. The reasons for volunteering are as diverse as the people who do it. Their main motive is usually to help other people, but there are plenty of other benefits as well.

Stress management experts are seeing consistent signs of stress among medical personnel, including marriage troubles, overeating, and physical problems like insomnia, headaches, and lower back pain. One thing you can count on: the stress of practicing medicine will always be there. So it’s going to be up to you to recharge your battery on a daily basis.

Although we're all familiar with the health benefits, exercise is a hard sell within the physician community. There's just not enough time in the day for it, we tell ourselves with a shrug, and we let it go at that. But there are ways that you can fit exercise into your daily routine no matter how busy you are, if you just make up your mind to do it.

What does your office need to do to prepare for an emergency? The answer to that question will depend on the structure and focus of your particular practice. Obviously, an ambulatory surgery center will have more complicated needs than a small outpatient practice. But the important thing is to ask yourself various contingency questions, such as this: How would we contact our patients if they were suddenly forced to leave town? And how would we access patient records if our office had to shut down?

We’ve learned one thing from every medical disaster we’ve ever been through—whether pandemic flu, a smallpox epidemic, an outbreak of SARS, or the attacks of September eleven. And that one thing is this: that emergency planning on the part of the medical community is an absolute essential. One important aspect of preparing your practice for an emergency is knowing the personal readiness of your staff.

Physicians don’t have to look far back to remember an emergency, whether a severe local blizzard or a national crisis like the attacks of September eleven. Since that day, the healthcare world has changed its outlook on disaster preparedness, and doctors now have a heightened awareness of the urgency of the issue. Still, most of us have not taken adequate measures to prepare our practices for an emergency.