St. Tammany Health System’s Post

Fifty years ago, trailblazing physicians in Fresno established an Emergency Medicine Residency Program – one of the first in the country – to train doctors to respond to medical emergencies swiftly and skillfully. Today, the UCSF Fresno Emergency Medicine (EM) Residency Program is now one of the highest-regarded and sought-after in the country. Read the story. #ucsffresno #ucsffresnoem #emergencymedicine #weareyourucsffresno

Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians OpenVolume 5, Issue 5 e13292 SPECIAL CONTRIBUTION Open Access National needs assessment of emergency medicine faculty regarding scholarly activity practices and support https://lnkd.in/dgVzqg3Z

Family Medicine is such a fun specialty to market because almost everyone is a potential patient! Getting out in the community is huge if the practice has friendly providers (and let's hope they do). Patients will tell others about their positive experiences. It's also a specialty where we don't have to spend a lot of money if the doctor, nurse practitioner, or physician assistants have the luxury of time to spend in the community. A little budget definitely helps, but it's such a direct-to-consumer relationship business that interactions are better than ads! #familymedicinemarketing #familypracticemarketing #wordofmouth #healthcaremarketing #physicianmarketing

Family Medicine is failing to attract physicians, and millions of Ontarians are left without a family doctor. The situation is only expected to worsen, and our healthcare system is suffering as a result. Emergency departments have long waits, and walking clinics are not efficient. It's clear that something needs to be done to address this crisis. The first step towards rebuilding our healthcare system is to make family medicine an attractive career choice. We need more family medicine physicians to address the growing demand for healthcare services. This is a critical issue that affects all of us, and we cannot afford to ignore it any longer. Let's work together to find solutions and make family medicine an appealing career option. We owe it to ourselves and to our communities to ensure that everyone has access to quality healthcare. #healthcare #familymedicine #physicians #Ontario

I have been always a defender of going to specialists to have a more accurate diagnosis. Well, this article might show the importance of the family medicine as a first point of contact, and how they can give fluent flow in the healthcare systems. The shortage of family physicians isn't just a healthcare issue; it's a systemic challenge with significant implications. This insightful article underscores the critical role of family doctors in providing essential care, emphasizing continuity, access, comprehensiveness, and coordination. With an aging workforce and decreasing interest in family medicine careers, addressing this shortage is paramount to ensure both patient well-being and the efficiency of the healthcare system. Patients with access to family medicine experience lower mortality rates and reduced after-hours care needs, highlighting the importance of long-term doctor-patient relationships. The absence of a family doctor often leads patients to seek care in emergency rooms or walk-in clinics, resulting in fragmented care and missed opportunities for prevention and early intervention. To truly enhance healthcare outcomes and system efficiency, investing in a robust primary care foundation is essential. How can stakeholders collaborate to address the shortage of family physicians and ensure equitable access to quality healthcare? #healthcare #medicine #family #access

Family physicians are the heart of the system. Every other vital organ (your kidneys, your lungs, your liver, etc.) represent all other primary and secondary care services – be it a pharmacists, social workers, mental health clinicians, specialists, hospitals, etc. Each of these are critical entities to your overall health. Every solution proposed to date - such as increasing scope of practice of other providers, "more teams," or graduating more medical students who may not practice comprehensive community-based family medicine - is simply increasing blood flow (perfusion) to your end organs. Meanwhile, we are slowly choking off supply to the heart. This will provide great short-term benefit but eventually the heart will stop pumping. The consequences of failing to support family physicians and the impacts of this mass exit from the profession this will be significant and irreversible. There is no replacement for family doctors providing longitudinal, comprehensive primary care. It is just going to become more expensive, more inefficient, and more convoluted. This story breaks my heart.

“Captain, there’s a large shape on the radar straight ahead.” “There are no ships reported in the vicinity are there?” “No, but it could be an iceberg Captain.” “True, but we all know the Titanic is unsinkable. Full speed ahead!” As a Family Physician, this is heartbreaking. My heart aches for the people that are cared for by this doctor. And the many more similar examples that I hear of across the Province As an administrative leader who cares deeply about the sustainability of the system, this is a vital sign that, unless corrected, tells me that the patient is not going to make it. Truly transformational approaches like are being undertaken in BC are needed. Yesterday. No later than now. Not two years from next Tuesday. Yes we need team-based care, yes we need pharmacists prescribing, more NPs, PAs. Yes yes yes. All of the above, and more…..virtual care that is compensated….I could go on. But we’re a hockey team who soon won’t have a goalie to put in the lineup. They’re all retiring. The backstop of the primary care system is the Family Physician. While we continue to build processes that are hostile to them, while we continue to compensate them in a manner that is so completely antithetical to “First Contact/Continuous/Comprehensive/Coordinated Care” they will leave. Because they can’t bear this in perpetuity. Because they can’t afford to provide that kind of care and bear those burdens with the archaic Fee for Service system that was out of date 15 years ago, and hasn’t aged well. Please, OMA and government fix this. It’s way past time.

END OF LIFE CARE OR MEDICAL INTERVENTIONS? This is an excellent article to highlight the dilemmas a clinician may face. As an obstetrician it was, thankfully, not a situation I encountered often. Doctors can find the decision very difficult. Families can feel quite helpless if they feel they cannot ask the clinician to step back and move to end of life care. In Ireland we can look at: * seeking independent advice from colleagues which is carefully documented. * Sage is an organisation that can provide advocacy support for the family and the patient. * Communication is key - the GP may be much more familiar with the wishes of your patient. * Getting advice, for yourself, to ensure there is minimal exposure such as complaints or IMC. As a member of MPS you would have access to independent medico legal advice. #medecine #ethicsmatter #medicolegal

This month, we are proud to spotlight Andrew Sama, MD, FACEP. Recognized as a leader and innovator in Emergency Medicine, Dr. Sama is a board-certified emergency medicine, pediatric emergency medicine, and internal medicine physician with over 40 years of medical experience. He is the founding President of Progressive Emergency Physicians (PEP) and Executive Vice President at Emergency Care Partners (ECP). Read the full article to learn more about Dr. Sama's impressive career in emergency medicine and his other leadership roles in healthcare and education. #MedicineisLocal #EmergencyMedicine

This is obvious to everyone in the field. We are trained to be doctors and then expected to run our own practices as well. It's like training teachers and then asking them to open their own schools. Improving the experiences of family physicians in outpatient clinics is one of my passions. I find that by managing things well, ethically, with excellence and quality of life in mind I have been able to recruit more family physicians than any other clinic group I am aware of. We have grown from 1 clinic to 7 clinics in 3 years with 127% physician recruitment growth year over year. It can be done well, but it requires someone who knows both business and medicine to do it. Most all family doctors are so busy practicing medicine (as they should be!) that they can't find the energy or time to manage a business as well. That's why I have built Terra Nova Medical Clinics and let everyone there know about my passionate advocacy to make things better! Let's make family medicine attractive to family doctors. Let's make it possible for them to do their jobs and do what they trained to do. #familymedicine #canadianhealthcare #medicalclinics