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Patty Locuratolo Hymanson, a neurologist, is a former Maine state representative. She lives in York.
Visionary leaders looking into the future of our health care system imagine complex systems changes. They identify trends that will help people be healthy, find and treat diseases, improve efficiency, and focus on wellness as well as illness. The trends include artificial intelligence integration, medicines tailored to our individual biology, convenient care through our computers, payments to keep people healthy rather than only paying when we are sick.
The trouble is, when trying to grow a system, like a tree, the roots and trunk must be healthy. Our health care system, for most people, is sick. How can complex changes be grafted onto a sick system? This is especially true when the sick system has grown by encouraging branches that make the most profit.
The Maine Medical Association has written a three-page statement on “Reform of the U.S. Health Care System.” This statement was developed after polling the membership of the association and researching alternative models of care. It is a start and worthwhile reading to understand where Maine physicians see our system failing both patients and physicians. If the problems are not laid out, they cannot be cured.
Of the many problems, one is particularly personal. As a neurologist practicing on the seacoast for 28 years, I closed my private practice to run successfully for the Maine Legislature largely because I could not give my patients the amount of time they, and I, needed to diagnose and treat them. Physicians are forced to see too many patients in too little time. Squeezing every drop from professionals and patients drives good profits but worsens care.
You will read in the medical association’s statement: “Physicians are burdened with documentation increasingly geared toward system requirements rather than patient’s care. … Put the patient first and protect the physician-patient relationship, particularly respecting the physician’s autonomy as an advocate for the patient. Provide health care that is high quality, comprehensive, reflects a physician-patient collaboration and is not profit driven. Promote patients’ freedom to select their physicians and other clinicians.”
“The secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient,” said Dr. Francis Peabody of Harvard Medical School in 1925. Providers of that care are burning out, suffer moral injury and need a restructured system. I cannot build that change but I can sound an alarm. Thank you to the Maine Medical Association for sounding this alarm, too.