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walkitoutI meant to get back to this, but some other stuff distracted me. But here I am again!
The Doc used to go to people, and one would only go to the Doc on occasion, but then there were large, not portable machines like X-rays at the Doc so we all went to the Doc and the doc stopped coming to us. Mostly.
But now, everything is portable! So all of it can go with the Doc to the person again, and rent is expensive, and sometimes docs don’t like the scheduled every 15 minute thing and so on and so forth. There might be opportunities to save money with chronic illness and some people really struggle to go into the Doc. There’s also the issue of contagion in the waiting room. Medicare has some data on chronic illness and increased reimbursement rates in the early 2000s because they thought this might work out better if the Doc could visit.
It’s a really interesting trend, driven by electronic health records and equipment portability, along within increase in rent and a lot of people who would be willing to work if the hours were somewhat flexible but otherwise no. I think layering on other providers like medical assistants (for these purposes, a nurse practitioner is equivalent to a doc, imo, but a medical assistant is a meaningfully shorter path to credentialing), EMT and similar could make Doc Visits Patient a future default. We’ll see, altho perhaps I won’t live long enough to see the peak in that trend and it’s inevitable reversal to Go to the Doctor Again. There’s a whole thing involving pharmacy deserts and the potential for the Doc to show up with Everything Needed that is also interesting to explore.
I genuinely thought I had already written this, so if I find out I did, I may delete this or merge it or whatever. But I think I just kept talking it out over and over and in my head I had written it down but actually, not so much.
The Doc used to go to people, and one would only go to the Doc on occasion, but then there were large, not portable machines like X-rays at the Doc so we all went to the Doc and the doc stopped coming to us. Mostly.
But now, everything is portable! So all of it can go with the Doc to the person again, and rent is expensive, and sometimes docs don’t like the scheduled every 15 minute thing and so on and so forth. There might be opportunities to save money with chronic illness and some people really struggle to go into the Doc. There’s also the issue of contagion in the waiting room. Medicare has some data on chronic illness and increased reimbursement rates in the early 2000s because they thought this might work out better if the Doc could visit.
It’s a really interesting trend, driven by electronic health records and equipment portability, along within increase in rent and a lot of people who would be willing to work if the hours were somewhat flexible but otherwise no. I think layering on other providers like medical assistants (for these purposes, a nurse practitioner is equivalent to a doc, imo, but a medical assistant is a meaningfully shorter path to credentialing), EMT and similar could make Doc Visits Patient a future default. We’ll see, altho perhaps I won’t live long enough to see the peak in that trend and it’s inevitable reversal to Go to the Doctor Again. There’s a whole thing involving pharmacy deserts and the potential for the Doc to show up with Everything Needed that is also interesting to explore.
I genuinely thought I had already written this, so if I find out I did, I may delete this or merge it or whatever. But I think I just kept talking it out over and over and in my head I had written it down but actually, not so much.