Those of us who have lived in the front lines of health care need to help the public an policy makers understand what stands between us and the work we would do for our patients.
I am a family physician who has worked as a salarydoc as well as an independent solo practitioner and has had the phenomenal opportunity to work with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and with other terrific individuals lead the Ideal Medical Practices Project (funded by the Physician's Foundation).
This work allowed me to engage with a terrific community of passionate health care providers and others interested in helping create ideal practices across the United States and the globe.
We have a vibrant listserv on yahoogroups and think that a blog may prove to be another helpful vehicle for communication.
Our goal is to help any individual or group within health care develop ideal practices - those capable of delivering superb care in a vital and sustainable practice. In doing so we have been exploring what it takes to create sustainable practices in an environment that is rather toxic (unsustainable insurance driven beurocracy and paperwork, inadequate funding that hamstrings our efforts to meet all of our patient's needs, our professional obligation to serve but our societal willingness to allow tens of millions in our country to go without adequate access to our services).
We hope that our posts might foster a greater recognition of the benefits that accrue to our society from unfettered access to effective primary care, and we hope to help policy makers understand what it means to create an environment that truly supports this work.
L. Gordon Moore MD
Seattle WA January 14 2009
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