June 2001 • Volume 7 • Number 6
NCSC speaker calls for 'fundamental transition' in family practice
BY TONI LAPP
Is there a new model for health care? One in which electronic medical records replace paper files, and patients wait only briefly in relaxed waiting rooms and make appointments by logging on to the Internet? Joseph Scherger, M.D., of Irvine, Calif., spoke of such a model in a plenary session at AAFP's National Conference of Special Constituencies held here in April.
Joseph Scherger, M.D., gives the plenary address at the National Conference of Special Constituencies.Scherger, a past AAFP director and former president of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, addressed the need for FPs to embrace emerging technologies to improve the delivery of health care in the 21st century. Such a transition will not only lead to more efficient service, but also to safer delivery of medicine, said Scherger.
As things stand now, "we are writing lethal orders by hand," said Scherger, citing the 1999 Institute of Medicine report on medical errors.
Training tomorrow's information masters
Scherger, who will become founding dean of Florida State University College of Medicine in Tallahassee on July 1, knows all about innovation.
The medical college, the first allopathic school to be established in the United States in almost 20 years, began training its first class of students last month. They will spend their first two years in Tallahassee and then will be dispatched to clinical training sites across Florida.
The Internet will be used to link clinical training sites and facilitate interactions among students, faculty, community physicians and patients. The school will provide students with laptops, and each student will receive a personal data assistant loaded with search information.
"These students will be trained to be information masters using new technology," said Scherger. "We expect them to not only learn from their community mentors, but to teach them. They will be trained to be 21st- century physicians, using the power of information technology to provide high-quality care consistently."
Transforming your practice
His advice to practicing FPs wanting to start the change now? First, begin e-mail communication with patients. Second, implement an electronic patient record system.
That advice caused somewhat of a stir among NCSC audience members, some of whom cited concerns over legal liability, confidentiality and reimbursement for e-mail communication.
But Scherger said that physicians who begin to use technology will soon realize the advantages. He said he's received fewer e-mails than expected, and, furthermore, patients tell him things in e-mails that they are too embarrassed to discuss during office visits.
It comes down to improving service delivery in what is, after all, a consumer-driven environment. "How we deliver health care isn't satisfying for people," said Scherger.
"Family practice is at a place where it needs to make a fundamental transition in order to have its proper place in medicine in the 21st century," he said. "We will not succeed if we continue the way we have been."
FP Report is published by the AAFP News Department.
Copyright © 2001 by American Academy of Family Physicians.
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