triage designers assume most problems should go directly to specialists

[Guest guest]

Am I bothered by this due to my biases as a primary care physician or

have we forgotten that primary care can be comprehensive?:

"Our first product we’re making answers the following questions when

you’re in a medical bind and may need professional attention:

When should I take care of this?

Who should I see? (specialist, generalist, retail clinic, etc.)

How much should I expect to spend?

Since overworked primary care physicians refer about 70% of their

visits to specialists, if we point you to a specialist instead of a

primary care doctor, we’ll automatically be “correct” (in terms of the

consumers experience) 70% of the time. Why should people, when spending

their own hard earned money, waste money on a primary care doctor visit

just to get a referral that will happen anyway 70% of the time?"

From: How

would you fix the access problem?

I love teaching patients how to care for themselves and avoid

overutilization with self triage. We used to do a lot of this in

overloaded military clinics. However, if these folks are assuming that

sending 70% of medical problems to specialists is appropriate then

that's pretty sad.

Maybe I'm just overreading this and they're just designing for the

dysfunctional system we now have. In a system with primary care

physicians working in overloaded, rushed clinics, it may make sense to

replace them with midlevels and a program that triages most problems to

a specialist.