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No doctor in the house

Certainly not a healthy prognosis......as The Economist clearly shows that there just won't be enough medicos for everyone, and everywhere, in the not too distant future.

"The past 150 years have been a golden age for doctors. In some ways, their job is much as it has been for millennia: they examine patients, diagnose their ailments and try to make them better. Since the mid-19th century, however, they have enjoyed new eminence. The rise of doctors’ associations and medical schools helped separate doctors from quacks. Licensing and prescribing laws enshrined their status. And as understanding, technology and technique evolved, doctors became more effective, able to diagnose consistently, treat effectively and advise on public-health interventions—such as hygiene and vaccination—that actually worked.

This has brought rewards. In developed countries, excluding America, doctors with no speciality earn about twice the income of the average worker, according to McKinsey, a consultancy. America’s specialist doctors earn ten times America’s average wage. A medical degree is a universal badge of respectability. Others make a living. Doctors save lives, too.

With the 21st century certain to see soaring demand for health care, the doctors’ star might seem in the ascendant still. By 2030, 22% of people in the OECD club of rich countries will be 65 or older, nearly double the share in 1990. China will catch up just six years later. About half of American adults already have a chronic condition, such as diabetes or hypertension, and as the world becomes richer the diseases of the rich spread farther. In the slums of Calcutta, infectious diseases claim the young; for middle-aged adults, heart disease and cancer are the most common killers. Last year the United Nations held a summit on health (only the second in its history) that gave warning about the rising toll of chronic disease worldwide.

But this demand for health care looks unlikely to be met by doctors in the way the past century’s was. For one thing, to treat the 21st century’s problems with a 20th-century approach to health care would require an impossible number of doctors. For another, caring for chronic conditions is not what doctors are best at. For both these reasons doctors look set to become much less central to health care—a process which, in some places, has already started."

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