The result from loss of primary physicians

by Rose Rohloff

​​An India folklore, regarding lack of awareness, demonstrates the current myopic view of various specialists, who look at isolated symptoms without comprehensive assessments, resulting in poor or lack of diagnosing of real issues to address in patients. The industry push to eliminate primary care, teaching people they don’t need a primary doctor, or using primary care doctors as simple pass-through without diagnosing, handing off to multiple other doctors, has resulted in the loss of care coordination, overdosing multiple medications with contraindications/side effects, with increased conditions because multiple doctors only look at their individual view.

The following version of the blind men and the elephant story is from Peacecorp.gov, and is analogous to the existing healthcare system of specialists.

​Long ago, old blind men were curious about the many stories they heard about elephants. The men were led to one for each person to independently touch the animal.

• The first blind man reached out and touched its side. "An elephant is smooth and solid like a wall!" he declared. "It must be very powerful." 
• The second blind man put his hand on the elephant's limber trunk. "An elephant is like a giant snake," he announced.
• The third blind man felt the elephant's pointed tusk. "I was right," he decided. "This creature is as sharp and deadly as a spear."
• The fourth blind man touched the elephant's leg. "What we have here," he said, "is an extremely large cow."
• The fifth blind man felt one of its giant ears. "I believe an elephant is like a huge fan or maybe a magic carpet that can fly over mountains and treetops," he said.
• The sixth blind man gave a tug on the elephant's coarse tail. "Why, this is nothing more than a piece of old rope." he scoffed.

The six blind men determined what they knew on limited assessment of only touching one part of the elephant, just as individual doctors only look at single symptoms; for example, cardiologist only looks at the heart, nephrologist only looks at kidney, endocrinologist only looks at the endocrine system ...

All body systems impact each other, designed to function as a whole, for a well orchestrated, compensatory mechanism. By only looking at individual symptoms of isolated systems, patient’s underlying conditions are not addressed for health, and can often be fulminated and/or obscured by medications. And, the reason primary care doctors are imperative for knowing the whole patient, knowing how to diagnose and treat many conditions. Primary doctors should only pass their patients to specialists for complicated, complex conditions, while always following their patient and maintaining all coordination with any other doctors.