Looking at ideas and opportunities to improve they way we get health care is a recent passion of mine. If I was well enough, I would attend
Stanford Medicine X conference, which will address may novel approaches. Personally, I am tired of hearing about well people designing health care systems, when the majority of input should really come from the experts, sick people.
Here is an abstract from one of the oral presentations at Medicine X:
Breaking the medical cartel – patient ordered tests and treatments
Gregory Schmidt, MD
Since time immemorial, a small group of individuals has controlled medical knowledge. Be it the shaman, the medicine man, or the doctor, the practice of medicine has been restricted and secretive. The medical cartel, however, will come to an end this decade.
In this session, I will demonstrate why it is essential that patients be given the ability to order their own investigations and treatments. You are not alone in thinking such a proposal seems ill-conceived and a disaster waiting to happen. However, I will show why this is an essential step towards creating space for the development of new models of health care delivery.
The current system of physician-centered health care evolved to protect patients from nineteenth century quackery. Today patients continue to demand trustworthy care; however, there are new ways to verify authenticity. I will show how the clash between the current medical model and potential future models will only be amplified once home diagnostic tests are more widely available and computer algorithms and machine intelligence has matured.
Many within healthcare anticipate that new artificial intelligence-aided diagnostic tools will be used only by qualified clinicians. However, this is akin to limiting Google Search to select university professors. In almost every field outside of medicine, access to knowledge and tools for implementation have been democratized and made almost free. Advances in diagnostics and machine learning will help do the same for medicine; but we must create a regulatory environment where this can happen.
In addition to new technologies, one can expect better personal relationships in health care. New ‘para-physician’ fields will emerge. Rather than studying for 15 years to become a physician, new specialists may train for a few years to become qualified in a specific domain – such as hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and lifestyle change. Such providers would cost significantly less than physicians, and provide more effective longitudinal care. The current system prevents such fields from emerging.
This presentation will address many unanswered questions. Where does this leave the physician? How do we help prevent patients from being duped by online scams? Is my headache a brain tumour? Will this system be fragmented and contradictory? Will antibiotic use skyrocket? Who is responsible for following up on test results? Who pays for this?
Explore the potential opportunities and risks that could result from fracturing the physician monopoly over health care and giving patients the ability to order their own tests and treatments.
