Patients want doctors to listen to them: Survey
https://www.google.co.in/amp/
Doctors who listen
This
refers to the report “Patients want doctors to listen to them: Survey” (Business Standard, April
16). Doesn’t it look odd that we needed a survey to tell us which was something
basic taught to everyone who had anything
to do with medical profession, during the 20th Century? Times are
changing. We need a downloadable APP for everything today.
Despite
the priority to universal health coverage given by governments at the Centre
and in states, the government’s responsibility to ensure minimum healthcare
along with other basic needs has been getting diluted in the recent past. Time
was, when we had the family physician who knew the patient and her family and
the health record of each individual in the family without seing any paper or
computer screen.
Sometime
ago, there was a report about the efforts of Manipal Health Enterprises to
dispense with the comprehensive primary and polyclinic-style preventive and
curative wellness services in residential areas, and bring back the dying
family physician mode. This is worth emulating nation-wide by the medical
profession and service providers in the area of healthcare. The model of the
National Health Service (NHS) in UK, which takes care of the healthcare needs
of each citizen by linking them to general practitioners (GPs) and good
hospital facilities, may be a distant dream for a country like ours, though,
with a population over 1.2 billion and limited resources being allocated to
healthcare.
Still,
with advanced technology, linking the healthcare needs of each family to a
local doctor, primary health centre, private hospital or at least a health
inspector from the state government health department would create more health
awareness, improve preventive healthcare and reduce delay in diagnosis of cases
where quick medical attention would minimise the chances of complications.
May
be Aadhaar-linking could be thought of here also.
M
G Warrier, Mumbai
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