While developing relationships with public health agencies will be challenging, CHI can enhance their ability to deliver necessary services during a time of diminishing resources for governmentally-sponsored health programs. We need to know where our resources are in the medical center and we need to develop a common approach to using those resources effectively. We also need to tier our resources with those on main campus. Some may question the relevance, or even appropriateness, of private physicians assuming public health responsibilities. The major part of the job is to treat the whole person which is connected to a family that is connected to a community.
Doctors are much more than specialized technicians.
Not only can they skillfully diagnose and treat, they also practice the art of medicine, which includes empathy for the patient and the condition they present. That is difficult of busy physicians to do. Increasingly, with the growth of managed care, physicians will have to assume a team orientation in caring for their populations of patients, Dr. Waller notes. Many of them have only been trained to eradicate the cancer, lower the blood pressure, prescribe medicine. The outcomes that should be most important to physicians is their patient's medical, social and mental well-being.