Before a doc can be board certified as an endocrinologist, or a cardiologist, he must first pass the Internal Medicine specialty boards (after 3 years of very hard postgrad training, plus a few years of sub speciality training). Compromise the primary care training, and the entire pyramid will be damaged. American healthcare was always the envy of the world -- now, we will be known as a nation where, on government orders, nurses get paid the same as doctors. How wonderfully egalitarian that sounds!
And all those changes are happening not naturally, but as a consequence of decisions made by politicians and government bureaucrats. They can't come out and admit that they screwed up -- so, they produce studies which prove that care by doctors adds nothing to what nurses can do. I haven't seen those studies, and don't know anyone who has, but I've seen it mentioned in the papers that they were done by people in important positions, and with many letters after their names. So, who are we to argue.
And as for the suggestion that MDs should be used only for hard cases, you can't be in a good shape if the only running you do is on the morning of the Marathon. Patients, most of the time, do not walk in into the examining room announcing that they are a "hard case". |
