A recent post I wrote made its way onto a discussion board on Sermo, a physician-only site. One of the posters disagrees with my assertion that pediatricians will and perhaps should be out of the business of outpatient medicine in the not-so-distant future. I’m not the only one who is of the same opinion, as noted before; fellow blogger DrRich has pretty much stated the same. Now come out recommendations from the Institute of Medicine that outline 41 quality measures to evaluate the standard of pediatric care. The overwhelming majority of measures are related directly to outpatient practice and the bulk of them deal with screening, prevention, or well-child check themes. I cite a colleague of mine who stated:
“This list has very little to do with pediatrics - the art and science of delivering medical care to SICK children. Anything that is "screening" or "preventative" in nature is NOT, IMHO, the purview of the physician, a person who has trained long and hard in the art of diagnosis and treatment of ILLNESS. Rather, these are PUBLIC HEALTH matters and should be relegated to that sphere. For example, screening for hypertension in children does NOT require the services of a physician; indeed it is a waste of his/her valuable time, since it can be performed by much less well qualified individuals very adequately.”
I concur with the spirit of the above statement. It’s not an admission of failure to acquiesce this area to a well trained nurse or nurse practitioner; I would posit that pediatricians perhaps shouldn’t have been in this arena to begin with.
Dr. K
Why do we require seperate resolutions for each and every discipline in medicine? Quality in Health Care covers all medical procedures. Do we really need such micromanagement as to mandate one-size-fits-all remedies for a non-problem? Are current medical establishments so bloody incompetent that they require WA oversight constantly?
We cannot wait for the next round when we are certain we shall see proposals on Podiatry, Dentistry, Geriatrics, Gynaecology, and Proctology
Marry from http://9pillsonline.com/
Posted by: marry | 05/31/2012 at 12:10 AM