Health Care Blog February 15, 2021
I have made the argument that being the first contact for patients with new symptoms requires skill and experience. That is not something everybody agrees on.
One commenter on my blog expressed the opinion that it is easy to recognize the abnormal or serious and then it is just a matter of making a specialist referral.
That is a terribly inefficient model for health care delivery. It also exposes patients to the risks of delays in treatment, increased cost and inconvenience and the sometimes irreversible and disastrous consequences of knowledge gaps in the frontline provider.
UNNECESSARY SPECIALIST REFERRALS ARE COSTLY
Seeing a high charging, high earning specialist when the primary care provider can’t diagnose and manage the condition involves higher...