In this day and age when you can go to the drugstore to have your throat swabbed for strep, or get a prescription for an ear infection. Many are also adding primary care and preventive services such as physical exams and chronic disease monitoring.
According to researchers, retail health clinics and urgent care centers are now a market worth $10 billion. And one of the not-so-surprising reasons is the lack of primary care doctors in many parts of the country and overloaded emergency departments.
But this is making doctors very uncomfortable, and not just because of their pocketbooks, or egos. According to Eric Topol, MD, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute and editor-in-chief of Medscape Genomic Medicine and theheart.org., consumer-driven healthcare is a concept that frightens physicians, and for good reason.
In the past Topol noted in a speech, “All the data, information, and knowledge were in the domain of doctors and healthcare professionals, and the consumer, patient, and individual was out there without that information, not even their own data. But that's changing very quickly.”
With electronic health records (EHRs), patients now have access to their medical records from office visits and hospital stays, as well as laboratory data, and on their smartphones, blood pressure and glucose and all the key vital signs a clinician needs to know to treat anyone. And people are using their PCs more than ever before to look up health information themselves.
Many economists believe that giving consumers more control over their care is the best way to control costs and improve quality.
It’s changing how medicine is practiced. “In the past, the Internet was supposed to be empowering for consumers, but that really didn't matter because what the consumer could get through the Internet was data about a population. Now, one can get data about oneself, and, of course, a center hub for that data-sharing will be the smartphone,” said Topol.
Doctors’ roles have changed forever, he added. “In the future, with each person potentially armed with so much data and information, the role of the doctor is a very different one: It is to provide guidance, wisdom, knowledge, and judgment and, of course, the critical aspects of compassion, empathy, and communication.”
Maybe not such a bad thing.
Edited by
Rich Steeves
