NY Times - Finding a Quality Doctor - Why the Author and Doctors Are Wrong.

The New York Times recently published an article titled, Finding a Quality Doctor, Dr. Danielle Ofri an internist at NYU, laments how she was unable to perform as well as expected in the areas of patient care as it related to diabetes.  From the August 2010 New England Journal of Medicine article, Dr. Ofri notes that her report card showed the following - 33% of patients with diabetes have glycated hemoglobin levels at goal, 44% have cholesterol levels at goal, and a measly 26% have blood pressure at goal.  She correctly notes that these measurements alone aren't what makes a doctor a good quality one, but rather the areas of interpersonal skills, compassion, and empathy, which most of us would agree constitute a doctor's bedside manner, should count as well. 

Her article was simply to illustrate that "most doctors are genuinely doing their best to help their patients and that these report cards might not be accurate reflections of their care" yet when she offered this perspective, a contrary point of view, many viewed it as "evidence of arrogance."

She comforted herself by noting that those who criticized her were "mostly [from] doctors who were not involved in direct patient care (medical administrators, pathologists, radiologists). None were in the trenches of primary care."

From the original NEJM article, Dr. Ofri concluded when it related to the care of patients with diabetes and her report card -

I don't even bother checking the results anymore. I just quietly push the reports under my pile of unread journals, phone messages, insurance forms, and prior authorizations. It's too disheartening, and it chips away at whatever is left of my morale. Besides, there are already five charts in my box — real patients waiting to be seen — and I need my energy for them. 

As a practicing primary care doctor, I'm afraid that Dr. Ofri and many other doctors are making a fundamental attribution error is assuming that somehow doctors can't do both.  She is also wrong in thinking that the real patients waiting to be seen are somehow more important that those whose blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugars are poorly controlled and the disease literally eats them up from the inside which could result in end organ damage to the eyes (blindness), kidneys (renal failure resulting in dialysis), extremities (amputation), and heart (coronary artery disease) and possibly premature death.  They aren't in the office and yet are suffering.

Until we as doctors begin to take responsibility for our performance in hard clinical and objective outcomes like glycated hemoglobin levels, cholesterol, and blood pressure, our patients will pay a price.  We should not pretend that bedside manner should trump clinical outcomes nor that clinical outcomes should override the humanistic part of medicine.

It is possible to do both today.  It isn't theoretical.  I only serve as one example.


I'm a front-line primary care doctor who also takes care of patients. I like Dr. Ofri also get a report card on my performance in caring for patients with diabetes.

Based on the medical evidence, my goals are set similarly to hers. For 2010, my performance wasn’t perfect but was 88.6%, 80.8%, and 70% at goal respectively.

I suspect critics will immediately begin to make a lot of assumptions of how these scores were achieved, when Dr. Ofri, another primary care doctor had very different outcomes.  Is it that I am not a quality doctor? Perhaps I’m too driven by data and have no - “soft” attributes like attentiveness, curiosity, compassion, diligence, connection and communication.  Perhaps I "fire" those patients who are not able to achieve good outcomes.

I can tell you many patients wish to join my practice and rarely do people choose to leave it.  The organization I work for also takes the softer side of medicine, a doctor’s bedside manner, seriously.  My employer randomly surveys patients on their experience. Does your doctor listen and explain? Do they know your medical history? Do they partner with you in your health? Do you have confidence in the care they provided you?

For 2010, 92.8 percent rated me very good or excellent on these elements.

So what does this all mean?

We should not automatically assume that doctors with great bedside manner cannot also provide great clinical care.

I can achieve the goals, which patients would want, and still be a doctor with great bedside manner because I work in a functional system like Kaiser Permanente. Primary care doctors are blessed with a comprehensive electronic medical record, are partnered with staff who help patients get the care they need, and are surrounded by specialty colleagues equally as focused to keep patients healthy and well.

So if there is any area of agreement with Dr. Ofri it is that simply giving doctors report cards and telling them to try harder will simply achieve mediocre outcomes.  Until there is a fundamental restructuring on health care is delivered (and simply making appointments longer isn't necessarily going to solve it either), then primary care doctors will continue to leave the specialty in droves.  Doctors need to lead change and use tools and skills honed in other industries, whether the Toyota Production model or lean process, which has been utilized by the Virginia Mason Hospital, or usage of protocols and checklists based on scientific evidence as demonstrated by Intermountain Healthcare and Dr. Brent James.

Until we as doctors lead, we cannot or should not expect improvement in patient outcomes.  We can no longer hide behind the reasons of our Herculean effort or bedside manner as what should really matter and account for something.  Patients expect these attributes intuitively.

With already so many examples of success in the country marrying the art, science, and humanistic part of medicine, the only thing stopping us to re-invent American medicine in the 21st century is simply ourselves.

Newsweek - Just Say No! - One Word Can Save Your Life. Too Simplistic. Doctors Need to Help.

Newsweek has a very provocative and yet incredibly too simplistic piece for the public and patients on its cover story - One Word Can Save Your Life: No! - New research shows how some common tests and procedures aren’t just expensive, but can do more harm than good.

The piece is actually well written and highlights facts that have been apparent for some time.  More intervention and treatment isn't necessarily better.  Having a cardiac catheterization or open heart surgery for patients with stable heart disease and mild chest pain isn't better than diet, exercise, and the prescription medication treatment.  PSA, the blood test previously suggested by many professional organizations, isn't helpful to screen for prostate cancer, even though the value of the test was questioned years ago.  Antibiotics for sinus infection?  Usually not helpful.

Certainly doctors do bear part of the blame.  If patients are getting routine colonoscopies sooner than every 10 years or are getting them despite being quite a bit older (80 and older) and frail, then clearly patients should say no to more care.  More isn't better.  (Whether a patient has the conviction to do so is another story.  When my auto mechanic says it is time to change the brakes or change the oil, who am I to say no?)

But the overtreatment and overuse of medical technology does not just fall on the doctors.  It is also the patients' and the public's perception of what is the right care.  Whether this perception was shaped by doctors, the media, movies and television shows, or patients comparing notes is hard to say, but the reality is patients have a certain expectation of what should be done which often is in stark contrast to the right thing to do.  For low back pain, many patients simply want a MRI and avoid an examination or visit.  After all, isn't the truth in the MRI?  Isn't talking to a patient and examining his back, knee and ankle reflexes, evaluating for joint strength and sensation simply from a by-gone era that is antiquated in the 21st century?  Do patients know the limitations of our understanding not in the history or physical examination honed by generations of doctors before us, but the shiny new piece of technology rolled out annually by General Electric?  As Dr. Michael Lauer, a cardiologist of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute noted in the piece, “Our imaging and diagnostic tests are so good, we can see things we couldn’t see before...But our ability to understand what we’re seeing and to know if we should intervene hasn’t kept up.”

Doctors who do provide the right care, which often is low tech and common sense, might be viewed as denying care.  If a patient has chest pain which is easily treated with a statin (cholesterol lowering) drug and beta-blocker and a cardiologist is not needed for further intervention, do you think the patient or the family will feel more relieved or more anxious?  If a stress test isn't offered to an otherwise healthy middle aged man as part of a physical (or at a minimum an EKG) and yet is offered the identical tests as part of an executive physical, do you think the public at large will feel better or worse in not having the tests, which are correctly noted in the article not proven to save lives?  (It is ironic that although fantastic experts are quoted in the piece including Dr. Steven Nissen, a cardiologist at Cleveland Clinic, his organization offers executive physicals, which you guessed it provide many of these tests and interventions to paying clients.  Though the results of the majority of the tests are normal it is that remote possibility that something might be wrong and the basis of the testimonials on the website that have the public clamoring for more testing and treatments).

In today's society where news is disseminated as sound bites or tweets, I am concerned about the unintended implications this Newsweek story will bring: patients will say no to everything.  Based on a well written, though not entirely balanced article, patients will anchor their decisions to default to no based on this small piece of information.  It has already occurred with vaccinations.  As the National Committee for Quality Assurance noted in its 2010 State of Health Care Quality report, childhood immunization rates for those in private insurance has actually fallen compared to those in public insurance (Medicaid) plans.

Childhood vaccination rates in 2009 declined by almost four percentage points in commercial plans.
   
A possible cause of this drop is commercial plan parents may refuse vaccines for their children based on the unproven, but increasingly popular, notion that vaccines cause autism. Celebrity activists are outspoken advocates of this view. Interestingly, we see vaccination rates in Medicaid – the program serving the poor – continuing to steadily improve.  

“The drop in childhood vaccinations is disturbing because parents are rejecting valuable treatment based on misinformation,” said NCQA President Margaret E. O’Kane. “All of us in health care need to work together to get better information to the public.”
The State of Health Care Quality Report examined quality data from over 1,000 health plans that collectively cover 118 million Americans.

Because of the complexity, nuances, and ever changing nature of medicine, patients more than ever need doctors to lead and be firm on what works and what does not.  The anecdotal quote by a doctor who opted not to have a mammogram should be taken as one person's opinion and not a recommendation for all women to do the same.  Having patients say no or expecting them to make the right decisions for themselves and family is not how the country will get better care.  A recent NY Times piece by Dr. Pauline Chen titled Letting Doctors Make Tough Decisions could not have been more timely.

... a new study reveals that too much physician restraint may not be all that good for the patient — and perhaps may even be unethical. While doctors might equate letting patients make their own decisions with respect, a large number of patients don’t see it that way. In fact, it appears that a majority of patients are being left to make decisions that they never wanted to in the first place….

The challenges appear to arise not when the medical choices are obvious, but when the best option for a patient is uncertain. In these situations, when doctors pass the burden of decision-making to a patient or family, it can exacerbate an already stressful situation. “If a physician with all of his or her clinical experience is feeling that much uncertainty,” Dr. Curlin said, “imagine what kind of serious anxiety and confusion the patient and family may be feeling.”

Medical choices are not as obvious.  Today the vast amount of information and choices are overwhelming.  The easy and natural thing to do is to run away or bury our heads in the sand, or simply say no when decisions are complex. 


The Newsweek article concludes -

Many doctors don’t seem to be getting the message about useless and harmful health care. Medicare pays them more than $100 million a year for screening colonoscopies; some 40 percent are for people in whom they will almost certainly harm more than help. Arthroscopic knee surgery for osteoarthritis is performed about 650,000 times a year; studies show that it, too, is no more effective than placebo treatment, yet taxpayers and private insurers pay for it. And although several large studies, including the Occluded Artery Trial in 2006, have shown that inserting a stent to prop open a blocked artery more than 24 hours after a heart attack does not improve survival rates or reduce the risk of another coronary compared with drugs alone, the practice continues at a rate of 100,000 such procedures a year, estimate researchers led by Dr. Judith Hochman, a cardiologist at New York University. “We’re killing more people than we’re saving with these procedures,” says UT’s Goodwin. “It’s as simple as that.”

Actually, I think doctors are getting the message as Dr. Atul Gawande noted in the June 2009, New Yorker piece Cost Conundrum.  Doctors are compensated more to do more.  Even medical students get the message.  Increasingly more are becoming specialists as reimbursement is far more lucrative in doing procedures than it is to simply talk and counsel patients.

The Newsweek piece tries to simplify the problem too easily by hinting to patients that saying no is a good thing rather than challenging patients to have an open-minded, important and thoughtful conversation about the advantages and disadvantages of having certain tests or treatments with their primary care doctor.  Of course since fewer medical students want to do primary care, my job and those of my colleagues in family medicine and internal medicine just got a lot harder.