Friday July 1, 2011
Your doctor is supposed to assess your cardiac risk for you, and coach you on what you should be doing to reduce that risk. But, despite pleas from medical experts and professional societies to do so, many doctors are still bad at performing accurate risk assessments, and are particularly terrible about spending the necessary time to instruct their patients on appropriate steps to reduce that risk.
This, one supposes, is to be expected when efficiency experts (those employed by insurance companies and the government, the parties whose money is at risk whenever patients see doctors) have determined that 7.5 minutes is the appropriate average time for a "patient encounter." Doctors who do not want to be officially designated "low quality" need to pay attention to these and other expert-generated guidelines.
It is thus fortunate that, to a large extent, cardiac risk assessment is something you can do yourself.
This, one supposes, is to be expected when efficiency experts (those employed by insurance companies and the government, the parties whose money is at risk whenever patients see doctors) have determined that 7.5 minutes is the appropriate average time for a "patient encounter." Doctors who do not want to be officially designated "low quality" need to pay attention to these and other expert-generated guidelines.
It is thus fortunate that, to a large extent, cardiac risk assessment is something you can do yourself.
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