Twittering the Future of Family Medicine?

I had the chance last night to meet with some amazing family doctors to discuss ways to use social media to open and sustain a discussion about the current state of primary care and where we're going. And where we should be going. And how.

There will be room for every voice and perspective about how to get from where where we are now to someplace (or places) better for patients, public health, and the well-being of those who deliver primary care.

Primary care is stressed:

• Access is poor: the uninsured don't have access, and if everyone did have insurance, we wouldn't have enough primary care doctors to care for them;
• Costs are out of control, and we don't get much health for our health care dollars;
  
• Reform at the federal level isn't as near as maybe we'd all thought. The white knight of bipartisan reform, Tom Daschle, got knocked out with an IRS body blow. And getting a big deal done on health care seems unlikely, even if it is even more important now than ever.

So what to do? There is tremendous support, in spirit, for better primary care, and it seems now that everyone wants a "Medical Home," though no one can agree on what that means, and the average primary care private practice can't afford to build one.

At out discussion last night, we agreed that there are things family doctors can do right now to move primary care forward at the front lines of practice. And we'll talk about those things in the online forum we're building. We'll blog, podcast, photograph, and discuss the path from here to somewhere better. And we'll make it practical. There's enough rhetoric already.

My assignment: name the project. Eep.

I'm on it.