There is an increasing trend among patient community to visit directly to the specialist doctor skipping a visit to family physician or primary care physician. An Indian survey revealed that only 42% of the surveyed people had a family physician. When suffering from an illness, 52% of the people would directly opt to visit a specialist and not a family physician. This practice unnecessarily put a burden on specialists with increasing number of unrelated patients. Moreover, this trend is really detrimental to the community of family physicians and thus, the very existence of family physicians are being endangered.
The traditional concept of a ‘family physician’ that looked after all the health needs of a family with utmost care and follow-up, is now changing. This change in trend looks alarming to me. What is your opinion? We have seen in our practice that a primary care physician refers…
