Contents tagged with perspective
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The true meaning of family medicine
By Tricia C. Elliott, M.D., F.A.A.F.P.
Program Director, Baylor College of Medicine Kelsey-Seybold Clinic Family Medicine Residency ProgramI am a family physician. In fact, I absolutely love being a family physician!
In my 10 years of practice, 10 years of academic medicine, years as an associate residency director and now program director, my background in inner-city, underserved medicine advocating for patients’ health and social justice, and my involvement with the Academy on the local, state and the national level, what is it really all about?
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Reflections of three years on the AAFP Board
By Roland A. Goertz, M.D., M.B.A.
Three words describe the three years I have served on the American Academy of Family Physicians Board of Directors: challenges, changes and opportunities. In a brief three-year period, the board has dealt with everything from declining non-dues revenues to deciding how to optimally impact the best opportunity in over a decade to reform an ailing health care system. We live in an interesting time as family physicians in today’s health care system, and as such, my tenure on the board has been quite a journey.
After only a brief period spent enjoying the euphoria of a successful election, new board members are handed a packet outlining their first responsibilities. Meeting dates are placed on calendars and primers on the inner workings of the Academy are reviewed. You are thrust into a constant and voluminous flow of information distributed in multiple formats. If one has not already developed a method of efficient data management, interpretation and use, necessity quickly breeds invention as a board member.
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Who’ll be there to care for me?
By John Kurt Frederick, M.D.
He slowly totters into the exam room with his daughter-in-law in tow. The plastic grocery bag holds all his pill bottles and his metal walker looks like it has been well used. A faint smell of urine wafts from him and his shirt is stained with breakfast. He manages to make it into the room. With difficulty he turns stiffly and lands his bottom in the exam room chair.
He is my newest Medicare patient, an elderly parent of a friend. He recently moved to the area to be nearer to his only son, his existence now too difficult to manage alone. His medical problems are myriad and complex and he takes a recipe of pills several times a day. I smile and welcome him to Austin as I gently grip his gnarled hand. We converse briefly before I dive into the box of medical records and the sack of pill bottles, many expired, many duplicated, and all powerful and dangerous in their own right.
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Looking back on two years of TransforMed
By Melissa Gerdes, M.D.
When I first read the Future of Family Medicine report in 2004, I was overwhelmed by the degree of change being asked of family medicine. Now, four years later, I am living in the midst of it.
When we were selected to be one of 36 practices from across the country to participate in TransforMed, my partners and I were not sure we could live up to the promises and hopes imbedded in the project. We also were concerned about dedicating the kind of time needed to implement some of the changes.
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Feeling the health insurance squeeze
By Linda Siy, M.D.
TAFP President, 2007-2008We are inundated almost daily with tales of escalating health care costs, exploding health insurance premiums and horror stories from small businesses that have been forced to drop health insurance and families who have lost coverage.
Health care costs have long outpaced the rest of the economy. In 2008, health insurance premiums are projected to increase at more than twice the rate of inflation. Yet most employers simply accept this as a cost of doing business. But what are we getting in return for these exorbitant health insurance premiums?
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What if auto insurance was run like health insurance?
By Stephen Benold, M.D.
Imagine that there are three entities in our parable: the filling station is the doctor’s office, the auto parts store is the pharmacy, and the garage or repair shop is the hospital.
The Filling Station
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