Hi everyone, it is hard to believe that 2019 is drawing to an end. Our "office party" this year consisted of a trip in New York City to see the Broadway show Waitress. It was fantastic, a feel good story with great music and characters. A great time was had by all! I invited everyone on this adventure to show how grateful I am for their hard work, but also to celebrate the end of the year in a fun and uplifting way together.
I have been talking to you for the past year about the changing medical landscape. The health system is now so complex that navigating it truly takes an advanced degree to understand. I wanted to take this chance to explain what that means because many have asked. Most independent physicians, both primary care and specialists, sold their practices to the local hospitals, which in turn merged with other hospitals or sold to investor owned management companies. These large conglomerates now have offices all over the state, and own all the walk-in clinics, radiology offices, and run the emergency rooms of all the major hospitals. What does that mean for you, the patient?
It means that now services are more fragmented, as going to a walk-in clinic is likely to result in referrals for follow up to several specialists all in the same "system". Under pressure to increase patient visits to specialists, walk-in clinics and emergency rooms routinely provide "band-aid care" and refer out for both diagnostics and evaluation following a brief screening and intervention. Similarly, Primary care doctors are only allowed to make referrals to specialists and facilities in their own group and not to the physician who is most qualified to meet the individual patient's needs. For each patient this means more appointments, more copays, and more time investment. And so most of the times patients get shifted from specialist to specialist and from test to test in an effort to sustain a large, top heavy organization.
In contrast independent practices work on your behalf only. They try to minimize your visits and refer to specialists only when absolutely necessary, as it is in their best interest to diagnose and treat most conditions in their own office. When they refer, they choose the specialist that is best for you, for example most accessible, best in their field, or a good diagnostician, etc., as they have no pressure to "feed" the doctors in their network. Here at D.C. Medical Care we are attempting to function more and more as an antidote to this trend in medicine by remaining an independent, patient-centered practice. We do this by customizing our medical care and always considering the needs and desires of the patient first and foremost. Our success is determined by your happiness and, more importantly, health and we are looking to optimize that metric over any other. To that end, we added some cosmetic small procedures and wellness maintenance to our menu of offerings, we have a new dietician on staff and we are experimenting with two new weight loss and weight management protocols. An exciting new addition for January 2020 is vitamin infusions.
The best advice for the holidays is to enjoy celebrating with friends and family, forget about counting calories for now and look forward a healthy and successful 2020!