In a Commonwealth Fund survey of 10,000 primary-care physicians in eleven industrialized countries, U.S. doctors had the worst score of all countries for making provisions for after-hours care. Two of three U.S. primary-care physicians made no allowance for care during evenings and weekends, leaving Americans no option but to seek help in more expensive hospital emergency rooms during such hours.
In another survey finding, 97 percent of doctors in the Netherlands, New Zealand and Norway use electronic medical records, while 46 percent of American doctors do. (Governing, 1/10)
In the healthcare bill making its way through Congress, changes planned for Medicaid alone will bring 15 million more patients into the United States’ healthcare system, each one likely to look for a primary care physician. Not only are fewer medical students going into general practice, but primary-care physicians are already behind the curve in providing health care at the most basic level. The reason for such a shortage of basic doctors’ services might have come through in another part of the survey: Fifty-eight percent of patients of primary-care physicians in the U.S. have trouble paying for the care they receive; the other countries in the survey had figures ranging from five to thirty-seven percent.
Ken Hey
