Since when is medicine about productivity?

45 years ago I entered medical school to join the medical profession.  My father, a psychologist, always expressed great admiration for the medical profession.  He strived to convince psychologists that they should hold their profession to the same standards as medicine. If he were still alive, I can only imagine his commentary about the following common topics – productivity, RVUs, performance scorecards and our inane documentation rules.  Productivity has several definitions.  Economists define it: the rate at which goods and services having exchangevalue are brought forth or produced : When did our profession adopt this definition?  If I spend 1 hour talking with a patient, examining that patient, reading old records, going to the literature to answer some questions, going to radiology to review the films, calling a consultant and then explaining everything to the patient, I represent lousy productivity.  But I have demonstrated great professionalism.  We entered medicine to help people.  The patient’s welfare is the main goal. Where is the patient in the productivity definition?  How much time should we spend with each patient?  I would argue that we should spend the proper amount of time with the patient to address the patient’s problems.  Some visits are rather simple, but some visits are very complex.  We have short visits and long visits.  Sometimes we need to do significant work away from the patient. The adoption of the term pr...
Source: DB's Medical Rants - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Tags: Medical Rants Source Type: blogs