Defining and Delineating the Changing First Tier of Healthcare

Through various blog notes, many of them recent, I have been trying to sketch out the changes in the first tier of healthcare that I see occurring (see:Retail Drug Stores Emerging as Healthcare Hubs for First-Tier Primary Care;The"Proximity Advantage" Enjoyed by Retail, Walk-In Clinics Over Health Systems;Physicians Are Disappearing from the Front Line of Healthcare). This level is roughly synonymous with what we typically call primary care but now accompanied by a large dose of consumer-directed activities and responsibilities. Below are a number of statements summarizing the character and dimensions of this first layer of health care as I understand it now:Physicians work primarily in a supervisory role. The majority of them are, and will be in the foreseeable future, employees of health systems (see:Rapid rise in hospital-employed physicians increases costs). Direct contact with patients and triaging will be mainly the responsibility of nurses, nurse clinicians, physician assistants, and other health assistants. All of these later personnel will be increasingly guided by diagnostic and predictive algorithms that will allow them to identify the more seriously sick patients and refer them to physician specialists operating at the higher levels of care.Primary care clinics operated by health systems and private physician practices and clinics will be supplemented by, or compete with, walk-in retail clinics such as those of CVS and Walmart and urgent care centers (se...

Source: Lab Soft News - July 22, 2019 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Testing Diagnostics Electronic Health Record (EHR) Health Wearable Healthcare Information Technology Lab Industry Trends Lab Information Medical Consumerism Point-of-Care Testing Predictive Analytics Public Health Refere Source Type: blogs