Jeffrey Brenner's Revolutionary Approach to Improving Health Care Delivery (2 min)

I love Dr. Brenner's work. This is so common sense and anyone who has ever seen the ED reports come back to you in the office, are well aware that some patients use the ER a lot.   Generally barriers are things like:

1. I cannot miss work and only the ER is open after hours.

2. The way I get transportation to a doctor is by the ambulance (Yes I saw this three times in Residency for ear infections).

3. I don't have a regular doctor or cannot afford the co-pay so I will use the more expensive ER. 

4. The pediatrics office won't fit me in that day. My child is sick today.

5. We are doing a really poor job of educating patients - generally - about health and wellness. 

6. We completely miss the boat about the impact of trauma on patient's behaviors concerning coming to our office, seeking care etc. 

7. By not understanding trauma, we don't know (or don't want to know ) that people have to chose between food, rent, heat or meds to control things like asthma or congestive heart failure. 

And on and on.

This really just makes sense.  Physicians /Payers come on board.  We can do better especially in our medical homes....