From My Bad to My Best: How Individuals and Companies Can Differentiate Themselves in the Age of Mediocrity by Kampf Julie B

Author:Kampf, Julie B. [Kampf, Julie B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Captivating Productions, LLC
Published: 2014-09-28T16:00:00+00:00

TAKING CARE OF OUR HEALTH

We all know our healthcare system has problems. One sign is the average wait time to be seen by a doctor, even when you have an appointment. Recently, I arrived for a 9 a.m. doctor’s appointment at 8:50 and didn’t get put on the exam room table until 9:45. Then I waited some more. That’s crazy. If I left my clients waiting for me for that amount of time on a scheduled meeting or call, I can promise they wouldn’t be my clients for long. What’s even worse is that the lowest average wait time nationwide in 2013 was 16 minutes, up from 15 minutes in 2011, according to American Medical News ; this is expected to get worse and doesn’t even include wait time in the exam room. Even when I’m a patient, my time should be considered valuable.

But what options do we have? Sure, we can get up and leave, just as we might do at a restaurant after waiting 55 minutes to place an order, but the problem is there are far too few doctors available to see us any more quickly. We just end up going to the end of the line at another doctor’s office.

Even getting an appointment takes an average of 18 days, reports consulting firm Merritt Hawkins, but it can be as bad as 45.5 days if you live in Boston. Given Boston’s high physician-per-capita figure, this can only be a sign of things to come. If it takes Bostonians 45 days to get an appointment with a physician, imagine the wait in more remote locations. (I’m kind of scared for residents of, say, Alaska.)

Many doctors today are in such demand that they triple or even quadruple book themselves in order to fit more patients into their day. The result is that we wait. We endure the poor service. Of course, if we’re more than a few minutes late to an appointment, we have to reschedule. Accepting bad service from our healthcare providers has become increasingly commonplace.

After all, they are in the power position. We need them, and there are fewer of them to go around. A 2013 CNBC report found that the United States is short about 16,000 primary care doctors. That means about 55 million people are without a doctor or are having difficulty finding one simply because there aren’t enough to go around. The American Association of Medical Colleges predicted in 2010 that by 2020, that physician shortage would balloon to 90,000. Exacerbating the situation is that of doctors currently in practice, nearly half of the 830,000 are over age 50 and scaling back the number of patients they are seeing, according to a 2012 Physicians Foundation Survey. I don’t blame them; I might want to be working less as I approach retirement, too.

Demand for doctor services is also growing, with an estimated eight million more people retiring every day. The world is getting older and in need of more medical care than ever before. And

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.