Health care truths 12 Self-Evident Health Care Truths

1. Pay primary care physicians on par with specialists, and medical students will gravitate in greater numbers to primary care.

2. Pay physicians offices a facility fee, as provided for hospitals, and more care will be provided in physicians’ offices.

3. Outpatient care is less expensive than inpatient care but is not accessible 24/7.

4. Personal physician, i.e., primary, based- care is less expensive than specialty care by 33% and produces better outcomes by 20%.

5. Parkinson’s Law of health care: Demand, expense, and bureaucratic obstacles to care expand exponentially when other people, i.e., third parties, pay for it.

6. Universal coverage is not the same, indeed may be meaningless, when universal access to physicians does not exist.

7. Electronic medical records are not currently an effective way to communicate with patients, other physicians, or hospitals.

8. The present U.SD. administrative structure (payment by private for-profit, private non-profit and public payers) is more costly than a single-payer system but may be more acceptable to most Americans.

9. Patients, i.e. consumers, paying more out-of-pocket, seek less care, are more conscious of their health, but may delay seeing timely care.

10. The U.S culture – individualism, belief in opportunity but not necessarily results, demand for access to the latest and best in technological care, and mixed populations with different belief systems – are more important factors in health outcomes than national health policy.

11. The medical homes concept – more pay for personal, coordinated, and comprehensive care – is attractive and needed but could die in wake of unreasonable eligibility requirements and lack of effective communication systems with specialists, hospitals and referral facilities.

12. The severe shortage of primary care doctors with accompanying lack of access to them will spark the next wave of demands of health reform