I had neglected publishing on this blog for long, mostly because I had moved from “wordpress” to “blogpost”, that was easier, user friendly and more convenient for me. This is a case similar to what has happened to “general practice” or the institution of “Primary Care Physician” or “Family Doctor” in India. I had made a reference to this in my previous blogpost here ( Titled Population Health management , data analytics in Healthcare )
This phenomenon of “losing” high quality general practitioners to the “specialized and super-specialty healthcare has roots in productization of healthcare, transactional mode in provision of healthcare and commercialization that resulted in the loss of “value” in terms of empathy , nursing and personalization of healthcare service.
With the emergence of “Value based Healthcare”, the value of “Family Physician” , “Family Doctor” concept is revived beyond its value as a primary care physician or immediate point of care for a patient before he/she is referred to “specialist”.
As a clinical scientist , I have always realized the importance and value of a good Family physician or Family doctor. A community physician who “Knows” his/her patients very well for years ! For many years and decades, most of the students who choose Medicine as their professional career had a vision of running a family medicine practice. The trend of pursuing specialization is forced on them due to commercial reasons and “convenience”. Over last two decades we in India are facing this critical situation where quality family doctors / General Practitioners in community are missing from the Health Continuum !
I clearly remember my idol and mentor Dr Christian Barnard (The pioneering Cardiac transplant surgeon ) emphasizing in 1997 , during his visit to India that we need more general practitioners and family physicians than specialists. His other points of advice to Indian healthcare were : Curb Population and thus Increase quality of life. Here are some of those memories , some of the news paper cuttings of Sept-Oct 1997.
In fact , what inspired this blogpost was an old album from 1997 with paper cuttings and photos of my meeting Dr Christian Barnard in India during his visit and long talks that we had during that time and during his lectures at various places in India.
Here are links to some of the previous related references and blog posts :
Population Health Management – healthcare data analytics
Biggest Challenge facing Medicine
Clinical Scientist 