The Future of Healthcare: Not Enough Doctors ? Health Hub from ...

By 2014, 40 million Americans will be newly insured under the provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and its individual mandate. That, without a doubt, is good news. However, it also presents challenging questions to America?s hospitals: How do we accommodate this influx of patients? Will there be enough doctors and available appointments to meet this new demand?

Access to healthcare services was a problem well before the ACA. Wait times for medical appointments and non-emergency hospital visits can stretch into months at some medical centers. Believe me, this distresses doctors and hospitals as much as it does you. We?re here to help patients, and if patients don?t have access, we can?t do our jobs.

Being accessible

At Cleveland Clinic, we?ve worked hard to make ourselves more accessible. Patients can schedule appointments in several ways ? by calling one toll-free nationwide phone number, by visiting our website, or by using MyChart, a private online portal that allows current patients to make appointments, renew prescriptions, see test results, view radiological images, consult parts of their medical records, and communicate with their doctors? offices from the comfort of home.

We also offer something that may be unique in healthcare: same-day appointments. If patients call before noon, they can see a Cleveland Clinic caregiver somewhere in our system that very day. We can do this because we?re an integrated healthcare system with a main campus, eight community hospitals, 18 family health centers and 3,000 staff physicians all accessing the same electronic medical records. It?s not easy ? but we believe patients deserve this service. This year alone we?ve had more than a 1.5 million same-day appointment requests.

Upcoming challenges

But even as accessible as Cleveland Clinic is, we anticipate that the coming influx of new patients will strain our resources. This will only be exacerbated by expected shortages of doctors and nurses.

Therefore, it?s imperative that we find new ways of delivering patient care, whether that?s through shared medical appointments, through medical school partnerships to increase the number of primary care doctors, or by enlisting technicians to help with nursing duties or nurses to help with physician duties.

Healthcare providers will do what they can. But you, the patient, also have a responsibility. Wellness. Prevention. Lifestyle. It?s more important than ever that you take care of yourself, eat a healthy diet, exercise, avoid household accidents and lose weight.

Delos M. Cosgrove, MD LinkedIn Profile

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Source: http://health.clevelandclinic.org/2012/12/the-future-of-healthcare-not-enough-doctors/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-future-of-healthcare-not-enough-doctors

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