React to this article in the Discussion Forum. The health care industry is a growth industry. Generally, expenditures on outpatient care will increase faster than those for inpatient care. The growth in outpatient care reflects several major forces, including cost containment efforts, changing treatment protocols and patients' increasing concern, knowledge and interest in playing an active role in their health care. More specifically, patients are demanding more comprehensive services ranging from alternative medicine to the latest and most sophisticated medical technologies.
Medical care is driven by technology.
Physicians' ability to accurately diagnose patients and provide precise treatment is enhanced by increasingly sophisticated diagnostic tests, technologically enhanced surgical procedures, assistive devices and improved pharmaceuticals. The crystal ball is not bright or clear enough to indicate if the human genome project and other advances will spawn the day when preventive medicine surpasses remedial care. So, for the foreseeable future, technological advances will not substitute for knowledge and cognitive skills. Therefore, in the current world, the best doctors are still those who combine their intellectual, personal and interpersonal skills with the appropriate application of the latest technological advances. As a group, physicians are rapid adopters of medical technology but often they are conservative in their approach to other changes.