I practice slow medicine. Now I’m having difficult conversations with my patients who want to know if I’m going to provide the ‘free’ care the government is telling them about.
Yesterday I had my first patient ask me if I was switching to bulk billing like the government said.
I advised that we are not at the moment but will respond to the feedback from the community.
I advised that if we were to transition to 100% bulk billing, I will have to shift the way I deliver care.
I will always endeavour to deliver the highest quality care but the nature in which I provide the care would change.
I advised that unfortunately a transition to bulk billing would mean I can no longer address the list of issues they present with, but rather each consult would be dedicated only to a single issue and the length of my consultations would be substantially shorter.
For more complex presentations we would need to space the care and management out over multiple short consultations throughout the week.
The patient advised that they would much prefer to pay for the convenience of managing all their issues at once and to be able to have a longer conversation.
They said: “That’s why you are our doctor, because you take the time to care when we need it.”
That is why a short consultation bulk-billing model doesn’t suit every clinic.
I practice slow medicine and tend to attract complex patients, or patients who prefer not getting rushed out the door.
But if feedback from my patients and the clinic indicate that free care is preferred over the kind of care I prefer to provide, then we will respond accordingly.
Having experienced “rushed out the door medicine” plenty of times in my life, I always aimed never to deliver that kind of care.
But, if that’s what the government and the market demand, then one day I’ll have to shift my practice.
Dr Patrick Gough is a GP registrar and co-founder and medical director of MediBetter.
This article was first published on Dr Gough’s LinkedIn feed. Read the original here.
