A NEW ERA OF HEALTH CARE IN THE UNITED STATES HAS ARRIVED
A new era of health care in the United States has arrived. The ascent of managed care and the prevalence of health maintenance organizations (HMOs) is quickly phasing out the familiar fee-for-service system. In the old system, a consumer could choose both his general practitioner and his subspecialists freely, regardless of whether he really needed the medical services or not. The physician was then paid directly by the patient’s insurance company or by the patient, who would then be reimbursed by his insurance company.
Under health care reform, which is already quickly growing in many parts of the country, insurance companies will essentially assign patients to see a primary care physician, who will then decide if the patient needs to see a specialist. However, there’s a big problem with this new, efficient method: only 20% of the doctors in the United States are trained as primary care physicians, while the remaining 80% are specialists. This means that as health care reform takes hold, 20% of the country’s physicians will be responsible for seeing 100% of the health care consumers. Unfortunately, with this amount of work, physicians will have even less time to devote to individual patients than they do now. For this reason, physician assistants and nurse practitioners will become essential parts of any health care organization, working with patients who require minor medical attention, while physicians concentrate on patients who need more specialized care.
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