Innovative Health Care Option
For years, ever since I first heard of nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants, I have thought that our health care profession could be improved by using less expensive–but not necessarily less effective–professionals to provide primary care. Now, in an article Want Treatment With Those Pills?, Newsweek is describing just such a revolution in progress. Small, walk-in clinics staffed mostly by nurse-practitioners, are popping up all over the place. What they provide is more consumer oriented medicine, including greater convenience, better service, and lower prices.
Right now the target is primarily those without insurance, for whom the lower cost is the focus. But one clinic, according to Newsweek, reports that more than half of its patients are insured. Quoting the article:
“The time for this concept has come,” says Brian Jones, CEO of MedXpress, which is opening its first clinic this summer in Texas and expects to have 500 locations nationwide by 2010. “We expect this to be almost a revolution in terms of the delivery-care model,” he adds.
I agree! I certainly hope that this will be a revolution in how health care is provided. Medical science continues to advance, so that physicians have to have more and more training just to get past the starting gate, and must spend a good deal of their time in maintaining their skills. A good thing, the improvement of medical treatment, becomes a negative because it makes simple treatment much more expensive. If I have a cold that seems a little more persistent than normal I have two options–delay treatment, or bite the bullet and pay the price, most likely just to be told that I have a cold, and have to wait it out.
Now in my household, with a wife who is a Registered Nurse, and MD/RN parents who are a phone call away, I can often avoid the dilemna. But others don’t have the family resources I do. Because of high cost, they may delay treatment until things become much worse. With a nurse practitioner available, someone surely well-equipped to tell the patient whether their condition is routine or requires more complex handling, anyone can avoid these extra expenses. Most medical conditions don’t require the time of a specialist, and these can be handled much more effectively.
With standards established for electronic medical records and the means of sending them quickly to a primary care physician’s office, referral can be quick and efficient. There is some discussion in the article of consultation and supervision by physicians, and that would provide an additional layer of safety, again using quick transfer of medical records and test results.
I think this is a wonderful innovation, and I’m glad to see that it’s catching on in a big way. It doesn’t solve the problems of health care, especially for the uninsured, but it certainly helps. It will not only reduce the total bill for health care, but allow resources to be shifted from routine care to case where more complex care is needed.