Mending the relationship between doctors, patients

By Dr. Scott R. Serbin

Our health-care system is broken, and it needs to be fixed. As a physician, I am dismayed that medical decision-making is increasingly being taken out of doctors' hands and ceded to administrators. I have witnessed the dramatic declines in physician reimbursement that have caused MDs to schedule more patients and spend less time with each of them. This not only leads to less time to fully explore and attempt to solve all the issues the patient is encountering, but also increases the chances for medical error.

I witnessed this firsthand last year as I accompanied my dad through a losing struggle with cancer. I was honestly shocked and appalled at the poor quality of medical care and the alarming number of medical errors I witnessed, which were chiefly due to the harried nature of care delivery.

This led me to establish Pinnacle Pediatrics, the first concierge-style practice in the region. By dramatically decreasing the number of patients that I care for, this style of practice lets me to spend as much time as necessary with patients and gives patients prompt access to their health-care provider 24/7.

However, this obviously solves the myriad problems of our current system only for those patients willing and able to afford this type of practice. Clearly, a much broader solution is necessary. Although this will require a tremendous effort, I believe that the foundation of this system is readily attainable. This should consist of physician-controlled, office-based health care, paid for directly by the patient, with required catastrophic insurance coverage for labs, X-rays, hospitalizations, etc.

This system will permit a dramatic decrease in health insurance costs, which individuals can then use on their personal health-care needs. We can then return to a patient-physician relationship, instead of a patient-insurance company-physician relationship.

Requiring catastrophic coverage for all individuals will decrease hospitalization and other facility unreimbursed costs, which should result in a lower fee structure. Certainly, many details will need to be worked out, but I believe this type of system can rectify many of the ills of our current system.