Primary Care for Seniors
Dr. Don Murphy
For more information about the author, click to view their website: Dr. Don Murphy, Geriatrician and Hospice Physician
Sep 23, 2024
Colorado - Denver Metro
If you are satisfied with the clinicians at
your primary care office, cherish those relationships. For many reasons, it is getting more
difficult to find primary care clinicians who go the extra mile for you and
your loved ones. If you are not content
with your primary care team, I offer the following suggestions.
First, find a clinician (physician, nurse
practitioner, or physician assistant) who enjoys listening to you and your
stories. The art of medicine is mostly
about the art of listening….and believing what you share. Listening and understanding build trust,
essential for any good relationship.
Every city and small town in our country has such clinicians.
Second, appreciate that young nurse
practitioners and physician assistants can listen to you and help sort out your
problems every bit as well as a seasoned physician who is overworked and/or
approaching retirement. In my 40 + year
career, I’ve had the opportunity to train hundreds of NP’s and PA’s. They gain the knowledge, expertise, and
confidence to become great providers within 9-12 months of graduating from
professional schools. Often, they have
more technical skills than older physicians.
This works to your advantage in the following ways. Assume you have an unusual combination of
symptoms. They know how to explore the
Internet and rely on specialists to find the best plan of care for you. Now assume you need a steroid injection in a
joint. Many NP’s and PA’s can provide
procedures that overworked physicians never learned.
Third, see the entire practice as your
primary care provider. A good practice
has all members working together as a team.
The members include front office staff who greet you for in-person
visits, medical assistants and nurses who answer your phone calls, and the
clinicians who care for you in person or with tele-health visits. If you find that any team member isn’t
respectful, you should feel free to discuss this with the office manager. All good practices should welcome feedback.
Fourth, if you have the means and value
extra attention, consider a concierge practice.
Unfortunately, concierge physicians are beyond the reach of the vast
majority of seniors in our country.
Further, we are seeing a shortage of these physicians just as we are
seeing a shortage of all primary care physicians. This brings us back to my key message: you
can find trust and comfort with a dedicated NP or PA. When we consider the evolution of geriatric
practice over the last 4 decades, we understand that it is NP’s and PA’s
providing the vast majority of visits in nursing homes, assisted living
facilities, and in-home visits.
Finally, it is important to understand
the pressure and demands on your primary care office. The advent of the electronic health records
in the 1990’s added a massive burden to all practices. The hope (and the myth) was that EHRs would
lead to higher quality medical care. The
reality is that EHR’s haven’t improved true quality. EHR’s are the main reason so many good
clinicians are feeling burned out. The
clinicians feel they have to pay more attention to the EHR (and “quality
metrics”) than to the patient in front of them.
When you express your understanding of this dilemma to your clinical
team, they greatly appreciate this.
Again, building understanding and trust leads to the best quality of
care and beneficial outcomes.
The article was written by Dr. Don Murphy, Geriatrician and Hospice Physician who plans to run for Governor of Colorado, on behalf of…. ” He can be reached at [email protected], his cell, 720-490-6757, or his main YouTube channel, TheCrazyMurphys5560.
- To view the original version of this article visit www.youtube.com/@thecrazymurphys5560
- Seniors Blue Book was not involved in the creation of this content.
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