Posted on 02/25/2014 10:20:17 AM PST by nickcarraway
My family has a terrific pediatrician, but we send our kids to see her less and less often because her office is available only during working hours. When is it preferable to take your kid to the doctor during working hours? Not very often. If it’s nighttime and they’re suddenly really sick, we’ll take them to the urgent-care clinic. If they just need some antibiotics or a flu shot or the like, we’ll go to the local nurse-practicioner, who has weekend office hours. The number of times when it makes sense for one of the parents to miss work, and for the children to miss school, in order to see a pediatrician turns out to be rare.
I think of this as a huge new convenience. Lots of other parents do too, as evidenced by the explosive growth of retail-based health clinics, which offer not only better hours, but charge 30 to 40 percent less for the same services. The American Academy of Pediatrics, on the other hand, thinks of it as a massive threat to American health. The Academy has released a new statement advising parents not to use retail health clinics. Why not? Because:
Pediatricians are specifically trained in child health issues. They know each child’s health history, and are best equipped to take care of both simple and complicated problems comprehensively within the medical home. As young patients and their health issues become more complex, the possibility arises that even a simple complaint may be related to a more serious, underlying condition that could be overlooked by someone who is less familiar with the patient, according to the AAP.
Trust them – they’re doctors! Not small-business owners trying to exclude the competition with hand-waving claims about complexity.
It is surely true that some routine ear infections will turn out to be a “more serious, underlying condition,” and that, theoretically, a single doctor with a long-term relationship may have a slightly better chance of correctly diagnosing the condition. But accepting the higher cost and massive inconvenience of traditional office-based medical care in order to ward off that tiny and probably nonexistent risk is the sort of trade-off that incumbent interests are always defending, but which has made American medicine the worst deal in the advanced world.
The explosive growth of retail medical clinics – CVS and Walgreens, among others, are making huge bets in this sector – is part of the wave of innovation that’s overturning the old medical model and driving medical inflation to historic lows. But every new model of delivering care threatens somebody’s old model, and that somebody is going to try to scare or regulate the competition away.
I’m so old, my pediatrician always made house calls if we were ill. We went to the office for shots and some stitches, but other injuries were stitched at home.
I believe that Nurse Practitioners and P.A.'s should play a larger role in non-emergency care. There should be several on staff right next door to every emergency room so that those who run there for the sniffles can be treated quickly and with less cost.
As a parent, I should also know as much about my child's medical history and should communicate relevant details to anyone who treats my child. Of course things can escalate quickly with small children, but any parent who has made multiple trips to the Pediatrician and then ultimately ends up at the ER knows that seeing a Pediatrician vs. a NP is not a magic bullet by any means.
“Most pediatricians are women, and they prefer to work certain hours”
Prefer to work certain hours? LOL So,,, have their figured out the cause of that lower pay thing yet?/
When my twins were 6 weeks old, one of them got sick. We took her to see the pediatrician, and he just said to watch her. She only weighed 7 1/2 llbs and had a fever. She got worse, and took her back to the ped office on a Saturday and a PA saw her. By then my daughter was throwing uo, and the PA sent us home with goucose water because they didn’t have pedialyte. We gave her that, and then gave her pedialyte.
Well, my daughter continued to get worse overnight. The next morning was scary, and the oed office just said to bring her back in at 11am. A different doctor was there, and sent my husband to the emergency room.
My daughter was having seizures and the glucose water unnbalanced her electrolytes. She had scary low soium.
She has extensive brain damage. The malpractice lawyer said the reason we didn’t have a case is because my daughter has done okay despite the massive brain damage. Thank God, at 17 she is a straight A student. She has speech problems still, seizures, and she is very socially awkward.
I changed pediatricians, and I always have their home phone number.
FMCDH(BITS)
People come in the ER all the time, “I’ve been feeling crappy all week.” 8-10 Friday night. In Teaching Hospitals you will be seen by Med Students, supervised by interns and residents.
It’s all well and good to say that a pediatrician can take better care of a child than a GP, PA, ERMD etc. and this is probably true. However all that expertise is of absolutely NO VALUE if it is not available WHEN IT IS NEEDED. Keeping bankers hours Mon-Thursday and refusing to be on call
or available nights and weekends while advising parents to avoid the
alternatives that are ACTUALLY AVAILABLE is the very height of conceit.
Till these petty assclowns are willing to step up and actually WORK they
need to STFU.
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