I interview physicians every week, and I often have the same thought as Dr. Matthew DiPaola expresses in a recent blog post.
The sense of dreary inevitability about the health care system that too many doctors walk around with these days must end. Doctors, it’s time to take ownership of your profession…before someone who cares much less than you, does.
Many are uninformed about health care policy and seem beaten down by the system, as if they are powerless to do anything about it. This strikes me as troubling because the truth is physicians are the only ones that can save the system. Ultimately, health care happens through interactions between physicians and patients, and any health care reform ideas that physicians do not buy into will be sabotaged either overtly or covertly by their actions.
Thus, the future of the health care system depends on leadership from physicians. True, they did not sign up to be health policy leaders; their job is to be physicians. But no patient signs up for a broken leg; when a leg breaks, the patient takes immediate action to get it fixed so normal activities can resume.
More physicians need to take immediate action to fix the health care system (both in their daily patient care decisions and in advancing policy changes that can save the system) so they can practice medicine in a healthy health care system.