A colleague of mine recently expressed his "crisis of faith" that he is becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of real reform in the insurance industry. He feels they are all lip service, have no real interest in change, and is becoming increasingly convinced that it is impossible to work within the system to affect the change necessary to increase quality and save the Doctor-Patient Relationship. Here is my response to him (and now to everyone):
I should know this off the top of my head, but isn’t it Corinthians which is read at nearly every Christian wedding, “…above all else these three things remain—faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love.” In a crisis of faith, when hope is no more, we need to step back and try and find the love which brought us here to begin with. Perhaps in capturing the essence of that initial passion, we can rekindle an ember of hope that things can/must get better, and if our collective embers get together, maybe the resultant fire will be noticed by someone who has the power to change the wind. We have a lot of embers burning all over the country. The question is how do we form our collective fire? What direction do we need to go? How do we get noticed? And just as importantly, how do we retain the values we set out with in the beginning while enjoying the journey along the way?
Maybe insurances are not willing to change—yet. But people are listening, and people (patients, doctors and businesses) want change. Insurance companies will change when forced to. The key is to have all our ducks in a row when they come knocking.
I have crises every time I think about insurances. They are the black holes for hope (or perhaps more aptly the dementors in the Harry Potter series). But that is why we have to keep even the smallest of embers burning and work tirelessly for change. If we don’t, things will not change, and everyone will suffer.
John Brady, MD, FAAFP
The Village Doctor
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