BY CINDY McCANSE BORGMEYER
The shape of things to
come (Online-only content)
 Really into it: Henry Francis, M.D., left, of Brooklyn, N.Y., and Lloyd Van Winkle, M.D., of Castroville, Texas, enthusiastically participate in a brainstorming session on envisioning the specialty's future. |
The year is 2013. It's Sunday -- the one day you don't have to rush to the office -- and you've decided a leisurely morning is in order. You pad out to the kitchen to start water boiling for tea, then pluck the paper off the front porch and head back inside, when -- WHAM! -- the front-page headline hits you: Health Care For All Achieved!
"Hot damn!" you say to no one in particular. "The AAFP finally did it!"
That's one of many scenarios created May 2 by participants at the Academy's Annual Leadership Forum-National Conference of Special Constituencies. The day's program focused on the specialty's future and, specifically, the Future of Family Medicine project currently under way.
The day started off with a solid reality check delivered by futurist Edward Barlow Jr. Barlow is president of Creating the Future Inc., an organization formed "to enhance an understanding of the future and the influences that will affect personal, professional, organizational and community settings."
The main thrust of Barlow's presentation: You don't know the half of it. Fully 80 percent of what you need to know to make your business -- whatever that may be -- successful in the coming years is completely outside your frame of reference, he told an audience of about 350 family physician leaders and chapter executives.
To have any hope of maintaining your current standard of living, quality of life and leadership position within your profession, you've got to work smarter, he said.
"It's going to take collaboration in an unprecedented fashion," said Barlow. He calls it alignment.
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"The feds are ready and willing to shed themselves of the health care responsibility ... Health care is coming back down to the local level." -- Edward Barlow Jr. |
Align yourself with partners outside your industry who have the expertise you need, Barlow urged. "Part of that alignment means opening up to diversity and taking advantage of the intellectual capital that lies outside our own borders."
Realize, too, that you've got to come up with a "value-added" approach that puts you out in front of the field. For that, Barlow advised, think about the rapidly changing demographics of the United States.
The population of younger Americans is shrinking, while the number of older citizens grows. This sea change is already being reflected in, for example, greater emphases on management of chronic illnesses and long-term care. In addition, less than half of the U.S. population in 2050 will be white. It all comes down to figuring out what it is you can offer these patients that other health professionals can't.
"This is the new America," Barlow declared. "Are you ready for this?"
As the U.S. population continues to diversify, the American workforce cannot but follow suit. That, said Barlow, necessitates courting more culturally and ethnically diverse candidates to family medicine all the way down the education pipeline.
Yet another factor is a shift in the way Americans acquire their health benefits. Barlow estimated that by 2010, only about 50 percent of the American workforce would have traditional employer-subsidized coverage. Rest assured, he added, the American health care consumer would be shopping around for the best care at the best cost.
"You have to come to the table and figure out how to offer health care that workers are able and/or willing to afford," Barlow said. "If the health care community can't figure it out, the private sector will.
"The feds are ready and willing to shed themselves of the health care responsibility. It's coming home, folks. Health care is coming back down to the local level, and you need to be thinking about that and preparing for that."
 AAFP President-elect Michael Fleming, M.D., of Shreveport, La., applauds participants' ideas at the session's end. |
Thinking about the future is exactly what AAFP President-elect Michael Fleming, M.D., of Shreveport, La., asked attendees to do when he introduced the next activity -- an interactive exercise. Fleming divvied participants up into small groups and set each a three-fold task:
Conference-goers took up Fleming's charge with all the zeal of the converted.
Many groups, including the one whose headline is quoted on page 1, focused on access to care issues, although pathways to that goal differed. Some chose pursuing medical liability reform as the chief means of attaining coverage for all, while others urged continuing to press for equitable reimbursement. Still others claimed that nothing less than a revolutionary change in the way health care is delivered would effect that end.
But other issues also hit home with attendees. Among them were development of a signature electronic medical record system and real-time patient care tools; further expanding family medicine's base of ethnically diverse, culturally sensitive physicians; and increasing family medicine's value to the public by promoting its professional identity.
Fleming closed the session by applauding his colleagues' efforts and assuring them their ideas would be taken up as the Future of Family Medicine project continues its work.
To reach writer Cindy McCanse Borgmeyer, e-mail cborgmey@aafp.org.
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Copyright © 2003 by
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