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Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Disease Management System.




Andrew Weil is an internationally renowned writer on holistic health and wellness, I recently came across an article about him. 

Mr. Weil says "we do not have a health care system in America. We have a disease management system-- one that depends on ruinously expensive drugs and surgeries that treat health conditions after they manifest"

For details you can read this article. I agree with the idea that our main emphasis is biased more towards the health industry rather than the patient and primary care.

We do not emphasize as much about balanced diet, exercise and prevention as we do about emerging medications coming out soon or the latest and the greatest CT scan on the block. Health industry these days is targeted towards maximising profits.

Recently I overheard one radiologist bragging to the other "I have a 128 slice CT, what do you have?".  

Few months ago I had a pleasure of visiting Dr Shilpa P. Saxena's office during a meet and greet campaign for a new hospital my organization built in the area. 

She was indeed a breath of fresh air. She believes that patient makes better choices when they understand all the factors which lead to a diseased state. She is  the only physician I know who has a fitness centre in her own office. 

In her practice if a patient comes in with high cholesterol, he is not automatically prescribes Statins, but he is prescribed a regimen of work out and exercise. I wrote about obesity some time ago here, I think we need to work on these issues a little more.

I think we need more PCPs to fashion their practices along the same way.

About the picture: A new day.

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