The new head of the American Academy of Family Physicians says he’s ready to make sure that ongoing healthcare reform efforts in Washington will help physicians, rather than make matters worse.
“Similar to what’s on patients’ minds, doctors are wondering if reform goes forward, will it affect them,” said Roland A. Goertz. “There is a whole host of financial problems for physicians.”
Doctors want to see some reform dealing with the “hassle factor,” said Goertz, a family physician in Waco, Texas. Many physicians spend four or more hours per week dealing with insurance and paper-pushing, he said, and they’d like to spend that time with patients instead.
The patient-centered medical home (PCMH) model has been proposed as a way to reform the healthcare deliverysystem.
“PCMH is the only model of care that can address accessibility, affordability and quality issues, unless you change the model of care delivery,” said Goertz. “Every system gets the exact result that it’s intended to get.”
Needed reforms for healthcare delivery, he said, go hand-in-hand with changes needed in payment systems.
“The pay-for-performance system doesn’t solve what is overvalued or undervalued,” he said. “We should really change to a blended system of payment.”
Electronic medical records are expected to help streamline both the delivery of care and payment systems, but many physicians are worried about the cost of implementation, despite incentives included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
“Implementing an EMR can cost practices up to $20,000-$30,000, and physicians are worried about how much will it run them,” Goertz said.
Also weighing on doctors’ minds is the looming 21 percent cut in Medicare physician payments due this year, he said.
“We just hope that better healthcare is created (in the reform process),” said Goertz, who advocates for 94,600 AAFP members.
In his 25-year medical career, Goertz has served as a physician in a rural private practice, a family medicine residency program director at two highly regarded Texas residencies, and chairman of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston.