Primary care physicians practicing in areas with a high concentration of specialists and medical facilities are less satisfied with the quality of care they are providing their patients as well as their own careers compared with physicians in areas with fewer resources, according to a study by Dartmouth researchers published in the May 2 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. Areas of the country associated with high medical spending led to high patient demand that physicians felt they could not meet. The Chicago Tribune reports that physicians in high-intensity medical areas had more difficulty obtaining specialty referrals, adequate hospital stays, elective surgery, and imaging services for their patients than physicians in areas with lower medical spending. In an earlier study, Dartmouth researchers found that 30% of Medicare spending is not warranted.
“The implications [of the study] are important; it’s not that we need to pour more money into the system and it’s not that we need more hospital beds and more specialists,” Lawrence Casalino, MD, PhD, professor of health studies at the University of Chicago, told the Tribune. What is needed, Casalino said, is to reward physicians for spending more time with patients so they can treat them more effectively.
