This is a very compartmentalized system as it has the primary care access and then specialists. They operate from the paradigm that the expedient solution to your chief complaint is making you feel they can actually help you, tests and possible referrals after a diagnosis, or medication, long term or short term. In my experience there is only a limited group of first line medications for emergencies and special conditions that are really ethical; the rest are drug family variants for conditions which arise from two main areas, your diet and lifestyle and your age.

Let’s visit how they educate you about this. They actually do very little and it is is a systemic omission which is truly negligent and not in your best interests. Let me explain to you how simple and easy it would be to correct these defects from your caregivers and then you decide.

Remember what they put on the clinic room walls between their equipment desk and table- primarily anatomy posters-and some drug motivation, or vaccination laws. The lobbied have a TV, or really awful magazines and fluff materials. The anatomy posters are fantastic, but the should be associated with lifestyle advice, so that you actually become more armed with information so that you can prevent health problems. Your Doctor’s lobby also could have posters on exercise lifestyle and even an AMA approved or equivalent WIFI channel with this information available!! If they could not endorse available materials all they would have to do for you is post a waiver about the materials they make available stating that they cannot verify all of it, and that you can by checking with other professions and peer reviewed materials.

Farmers markets and clean food outlets could be posting access and sales dates at your Doctor’s office. Arts recreation and culture materials from the community could be there, as well as community based groups, clubs and counseling outlets. Isn’t a family Physician really a Community Physician?

I have polled a few Physicians and Surgeons when possible to understand why they present the way they do to you. The response generally is that they assume that you have enough teaching from school about diet and exercise and stress management. I find this hard to believe however for a very big reason, they all are involved in prescribing increasing numbers of people onto psychiatric medications and stress related conditions like high blood pressure at earlier and earlier ages.

Let’s do the math on a Family Physician’s practice in this treatment paradigm in Vancouver, BC. A practice with a patient pool of 800 as individuals or families. He can see each one for 20 minutes, over a day with 480 available minutes 5 days a week, so about 2500 minutes/20=125 visits which would cover the patient base every six weeks. Here is a link and then a snapshot of the BC government billing reimbursements for public health care for a quick follow up discussion; https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/health/practitioner-professional-resources/msp/physicians/payment-schedules/msc-payment-schedule

If the GP makes a gross take home income of $150-170K per year working 4-5 days per week, they make $4700 per week and $1400.00/day averaging a billing of $50 per ordinary 15-24 patient visits per day with prescriptions, extra procedures ensuring the top up cash flow. (If your doc limits his visits to 16- he/she is prescribing or doing special procedures to achieve top up to this burn rate). This will cover office and staff costs. Each one also screens their patient age and demographic depending upon their practice interests. They all are operating Professional corporations, which means they are all business people, and have limited liability of the corporations protecting them in addition to malpractice or professional practice insurance.

On this system, they really do have pressure to be running with about 40 prescription renewals per week and 5 new prescriptions per week, over 2,000 dispensing fees per year at about $24k per year. http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-drug-companies-agree-to-divulge-how-much-they-pay-doctors-health-groups

If you are a teacher with a 25 student class, remember how much energy goes out to those students even for 5 hours per day. Physicians build up a clinical attitude over their training and exposure to our problems and unless they are leading a trauma or surgery team, they are handling your one chief complaint so they can remove it, or chemically alter your awareness of it. The win-win from asking about why the standard family medical clinic is not more engaged with you on your healing journey is that it is well understood and documented that when we provide empowerment, we receive more in return, and with some planning and collaborating, these physicians could really improve the quality of their environment and daily practice 3-fold, while providing the treatment room services. A CMA committee could easily oversee a kit for these offices, which the support and clerical staff would probably really love to maintain in these clinics.

The Physicians in the allopathic tradition have sadly not found a way to buffer the repeating medication side effects problem which leads them to plan to work with you on your morbidity as a result of the side effects, it’s called co-morbidity. The #1 side effect is NVD-nausea, vomiting, diarrhea. Yes- your gut and digestive system where your second brain is, consistently rejects medications. The other more insidious side effects spread from there over time, and are only disclosed in the medication monographs. Why does the gut disagree with a drug- the tissues including the biome inside of us does not quietly accept absorption of materials it is not familiar with. Both the gut biome and also your immune system read molecules and protein segments in their defense algorithms and have a go-no go regimen that you are made aware of with their effect on you.

Physicians have a great understanding of human physiology and anatomy, emergency procedures, emergency drugs and far too many 2-5th line drugs which one should be encountering 30-40 years later than at present in ones lifetime. They know what your environment is doing to you, including your food. Their is a loss to you that they are not empowering you even with a tiny effort in staging their clinics in an empowering way where they can reinforce health leadership in other parts of your community- for probably about $250.00 per clinic using a CMA or government approved health encouragement and reinforcement display system this would be a moot point.

We all have felt at times that we are just doing our own little bit, dutifully covering our niche area, and that this is enough. The more we think this however, the worse that will get. Truly, I think we all do need to make as much effort in cross referencing other positive parts of our world in our storefronts, our writing, our connecting with others when in public. Knowledge is empowerment. Even our most educated and trained professionals should be asked to be more integrative and empowering to those they serve. The appreciation and the quality of their interactions with their clients will be much better, better questions, more goal oriented, healthier, and more positive.

There is some change in our medical system coming because when a 55 year old lady with a knee function and cartilage decrease results in a $38,000.00 subsidized knee replacement prescription without affording her $3,000 in a simple concentrated stem cell injection, with a $150.00 HGH boost that could result in a full cartilage recovery at 45% odds, and a surgery delay of 10-20 years with full function at 75% odds we need to review the funding flows in our system as a society at the policy level, where there is some freedom from being dictated to by one monopoly like group out of self interest. This situation I just described has been an ongoing problem that has needed addressing for 20 years with policy.

It can be successfully addressed though policy change which you would be asking your leaders and politicians to make. Believe me, a lot of the people who step up for public office are already aware of this type of challenge with friends or family. I hope that you can cross reference and let your leaders know every chance you get about this kind of systemic problem because it not only as you see, would save taxpayer funds, it would be much less harsh and invasive to focus on restorative medicine that is clinically and functionally successful alongside leaving in the best from what we do have.

It is definitely worth speaking with Naturopaths and Chiropractors to be aware of both their traditional and continually improving and evolving techniques because they were not well subsidized they have been forced to deliver a huge amount of value for their fees, and we should really investigate this from a head to head patient cost-outcome comparison and do some integration despite the objectors. We could quite possible leap frog over some notably poor care to significantly better quality of life improvements, but– you will need to tell them that you want it, and so will need to investigate more about it to be considered credible. Connect with these professionals and ask about fees and how they help you avoid incurring costs from dysfunction and illness.