The Immeasurable Value of Continuity of Care

Today I visited my internist for a checkup and flu shot. We talked about how I’m doing, and she examined me, and we discussed what procedures I ought have done and not done. She’s been my doctor since the summer of 1987, when I was an intern at the hospital.

We reviewed so much that has happened in the interim.

How rare it is, now, to have a doctor who knows me. Continuity in care is so valuable.

One of my greatest fears is being in the hospital again, and having hospitalists – doctors who work full-time in the hospital – be the ones to see me each day, and make decisions about what I need. Yet I’m bracing for it because, well, that’s how it is, now.

From a health care administration perspective, I recognize the value of delegating inpatient care to physicians who are not my usual doctors. And from the perspective of a physician who after hours and on weekends, would walk to and from the hospital, back and forth, countless times, to see my patients when they were sick, I know it’s neither cost-effective nor wise for physicians to push themselves to get over to the hospital before or after they’ve gone home, and called everyone back, and maybe eaten dinner. Doctors need rest, too.

But as a patient, when I’ve been in the hospital, nothing was more reassuring than visits by my usual doctors – my internist, my oncologist, my surgeon, my orthopedist…Being cared for by strangers, however competent, is not the same, although there may never be a study to prove it.

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