“Patient Profiling” as a cause of medical error.

Patient Profiling: Are You a Victim?

I’ve read things by Dr. Pamela Wible before and she is definitely on a piece of the right track.

Doctors are not exactly objective, to put it mildly. I am seeing a lot of patients who have been misdiagnosed. The reason is often “stereotyping.” A woman’s pain is all too often taken less seriously than a man’s. The probability of being diagnosed with schizophrenia is far greater for some races than others.

Yes doctors do commit suicide, in ever-increasing numbers.

Although it is noble to intervene with physicians it is not nearly enough, for the root of the problem has not been acknowledged.

In the land of capitalism, American Medicine is a business. People generate money for this business by making sure doctors, therapists, all treatment personnel are seen, and billed, as long as possible.

Certainly nobody makes money by curing patients.

Cheaper practitioners are often substituted for doctors. I often see patients who think I am a physicians assistant or nurse — because I spend too much time with them. Doctors are spurred on towards “productivity,” which means seeing a larger number of patients for a shorter period of time.

Medical practices now concentrate more on “growth” than on patient care. Several of the largest are constantly adding practitioners — doctor extenders — and opening new locations. They are more like Walmart than The Mayo Clinic.

I routinely see patients who have not seen a “real” doctor for years.

Making a diagnosis requires time and reflection, neither of which comes easily in this system. Besides, it has long been acknowledged that medicine is a “human” science, unlike “hard” sciences,” like physics and engineering. Data is subjective and incomplete by definition, as you get most of it through the patient’s mouth.

If capitalism/business is unrestrained, who will protect the patients? Nobody seems to be protecting the doctors. Certainly not medical administration, which is watching the financial “bottom line” and may totally be at cross-purposes.”

Although the other countries where I have practiced, France and Canada, sometimes struggle, all international indices of health care I know suggest we are doing considerably worse that the at protecting the health of the populace. Quotation or paraphrase, the amazingly prescient Thomas Jefferson saw this one coming.

“If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.”

Only when American Medicine becomes all it could and should be, will problems in the system become corrected.