National Academy Press, 1996. It is easy to worry these days. Business barons like to belittle our background as office-based general practitioners in the community. They call what we do a dying cottage industry. Real doctors, they say, are subspecialists in metropolitan medical centers.
Real patients have insurance and require procedures.
Health system analysts who deal with printouts rather than patients declare that services can only be provided efficiently by corporate systems organized according to proprietary standards. Family practice has long promoted outcomes, teams and accountability. We must recognize it in ourselves and renew our commitment to deliver it daily. The biggest benefits and costs are almost always the hardest to measure. These are the parts of people that family doctors work with every day.