Three Steps to a Better Health-Care System

   Health care: It just might be one of the social problems where we could make the most improvement immediately. I'll list three things that could make a difference, each of which could be instituted right away, and you tell me if they wouldn't bring significant improvement. You tell me if we couldn't do these things right away.
  1. Invent integrated medicine. Actually, "inventing" this is a misnomer. We once had an integrated system, but we wandered from it. I would bring all the medical specialties together under the same practice. Each clinic would have an endocrinologist, a foot doctor, a spine doctor, a cardiologist, etc, and they would all fall under the umbrella of a general doctor, who would run the show. When you scheduled in with the general doctor, the scheduler would also leave windows of time with the specialists should the thought be that you might need to see those specialists. And, if something came up during the visit that required a specialist that wasn't scheduled, you would be taken into that doctor, on the spot. That would push back other patients, making the wait in the waiting room longer, but it would make for a better system.
  One-stop medical care: No more would you have to run all over town, wondering which specialists you ought to be seeing.You wouldn't have to make an appointment with the general that required a 10-day wait, only to be referred to a specialist requiring another 10-day wait. And, there would be fewer misdiagnoses because all the doctors would review the symptoms if there was a chance it might involve their specialties, thus better ensuring that things would not go undetected.
  2. Greater and quicker and more comprehensive use of the MRI. Every patient would receive an MRI on a regular basis. And, you wouldn't be referred across town for the MRI, which requires one waiting period, only to have to go back to your doctor to get the evaluation, thus requiring another wait period. The MRIs would be done right at the clinic. The results would be announced right with that visit. And, instead of just focusing on the body area in question, the whole body would be filmed, the whole body would be analyzed -- detecting problems that otherwise would go undetected.
   3. You probably could replace a lot of doctors with computers, placing the patient's data (blood d s work results, MRI results, questionnaire answers, etc.) in the computer, and letting the computer do the diagnoses. But, if you like, keep the doctors, and just let the computer give preliminary analyzes that are reviewed by the doctors. The computer could look over the case histories, the symptoms, and so forth, and not only give the doctor a diagnosis to review, but a determination of which specialists should be pulled into the diagnosis.