Unfortunate Truth of Modern Era Medicine!

Testing and procedure-based incentives have eroded the clinical acumen of medical professionals. This has led to more iatrogenic complications on a larger scale than it has actually helped patients. Physicians often justify these unnecessary tests for medicolegal protection, and the art of medicine has been abandoned in modern practice.

The over-reliance on testing is so prevalent that many physicians, both experienced and novice, have forgotten the importance of history taking, physical exams, and narrowing differential diagnoses. Medicine has become vague, with practitioners encouraged to generate a laundry list of irrelevant diagnoses rather than a precise and focused list of one or two possibilities. This approach has become so widespread that it is now considered the standard of care.

Unfortunately, many are heavily influenced by how some physicians utilize these testing tools rather than reading the literature and forming their own conclusions. Testing patterns have become a knee-jerk response, from the ER to office medicine, leading to a plethora of tests ordered as standard procedure for any symptom a patient presents with.

Some physicians are swayed by pharmaceutical and device representatives to the point where they adopt promotional talking points as their medical practice. This results in billions of dollars wasted in the healthcare industry due to irrational decisions by medical providers, including MDs and APPs. Cost-effectiveness and value-based practices have been discarded.

Quality metrics, although implemented for legitimate reasons, have often been applied in ways that do not improve the quality of care. The Electronic Medical Record (EMR) was introduced to facilitate communication and prevent the duplication of tests, thereby saving healthcare dollars and identifying deviations from the standard of care. However, it has instead contributed to physician burnout and less patient interaction.

Nursing and medical professionals spend countless hours, even on weekends, catching up with the administrative work of the EMR to justify higher billing levels for insurance companies. Thus, the primary objective of the EMR as a tool for effective communication among physicians and other providers has been undermined by ancillary and redundant requirements from insurance companies and Medicare.

The cost of medicines is rising exponentially, while coverage is shrinking. The prior authorizations that physicians and APPs must deal with add another layer of complexity to providing effective healthcare to our patients.

This pattern of practice seems never-ending. Physicians who resist it are often deemed "not a good fit" for these corporate environments. As a result, physicians are not united in working together as a team to combat this issue. Unity among physicians is crucial to challenging and ending this so-called modern medicine.