Physicians back reform

EDITOR:

We and the members of the Nevada Academy of Family Physicians support health care reform. In the current health care system, we as primary care providers are finding it more and more difficult to provide basic medical care to our patients.

In most cases, a family physician running a full-time practice is unable to provide adequate care for his/her patients and even cover their overhead. Our current system does not promote or value the wellness treatment or preventative medicine that we, as family physicians, feel helps keep our patients healthy and out of the health care system. As the debate over national health system reform presses forward we would like you to be aware of our needs and the needs of our patients.

We, as family physicians, envision a reformed health care system in America that puts the patient at the center. The benchmarks of a patient-centered medical system include a patient's right to choose and maintain a personal relationship with a primary care physician, uninterrupted access to their personal physician, and a system that prioritizes a patient's wellness before reactive, illness-centered medical care. To follow are important reform items that will help produce meaningful reform.

We support health insurance reform that promotes competition in the marketplace thus promoting quality and affordability. Our patients should be able to afford health insurance for themselves and their whole families. We support legislation that helps provide affordable options to patients up to and possibly including a public plan option. We believe that many of the proposed steps to make health insurance affordable promote an individual's or family's ability to get insurance that better serves their needs as well as make their health insurance portable. Insurance reform should include rules governing the private insurance industry so patients may not be excluded from obtaining insurance or discriminated against due to pre-existing conditions. We support legislation that preserves a patient's ability to keep their insurance if they are satisfied and choose the doctor they wish to see.

As an academy we support payment reform. In order to encourage wellness and preventative medical care we need to pay physicians to address wellness issues. We support restructuring of the SGR to better support a primary care-centered system and promote preventative care as opposed to the current reactive, illness based system. We agree with an incentive to primary care physicians to provide preventative care services as a way of demonstrating value for these services.

Increasing the workforce in primary care is essential to provide access for patients to a personal, patient-centered physician/practice. We strongly support legislation that supports primary care post-graduate training programs.

Finally, the Patient-Centered Medical Home is key to producing a system that puts the patients before the profits. Supporting pilot programs to help us mature this model is essential to America's patient centered health care future.

Health care reform is absolutely necessary for the future of healthcare in this country and we stand with the other 94,600 members of the American Academy of Family Physicians. We will be encouraging our colleagues and patients to do the same.

Dr. Mary Maul

President, NAFP

Dr. David A. Johnson

Policy Committee Chair, NAFP