Hi. I'm a huge fan, by the way.
REHM
Thank you.
DONDA
I just want to say that I have a unique perspective. I've had a great deal of exposure. I've had 17 collapsed lungs, two lung surgeries, breast cancer and ovarian cancer. So I've had an opportunity to be serviced by the physicians, surgeon and nurse practitioners. And across the board, I have to say that the best listeners that I have been exposed to have been my nurse practitioners, my physician's assistant. They have taken the time to listen, and therefore, in numerous occasions, have literally saved my life.
DONDA
While at the hands of a physician who was in and out of the room so quickly, he or she made an error that would have cost me my life. So the bottom line for me is really this: it boils down to -- we could obviously create an organizational chart that the nurse practitioners could follow. This could be a collaborative effort. We could put this in place, take some of the burden off of the physicians.
DONDA
It's my belief that the physicians that I've been exposed to, the majority of them do not want to give up their power. So the discussion that we're having is not so much about the safety of the patient nor if a system could be created that would accommodate serving the patient better, but really the doctors don't want to give up the power that comes with the white coat.
REHM
Mary Agnes, do you want to comment?
CAREY
Well, her assessment that doctors don't want to relinquish their power is a criticism of this. But, of course, as our physician is talking about, they also feel that for the patient -- for the safety of the patient, you need to have a physician involved and that physicians have more training to recognize more critical cases. But I know that Ken differs with that.
CAREY
But one thing about that's interesting to me and, you know, I work for Kaiser Health News, we've written about this subject and people write in. And one of the comments was ostensibly from the physicians, how the author described himself or herself, and their argument was if a nurse practitioner set up their own practice and had to meet the same caseload demands as a physician, they may not be able to spend as much time to get as much data.
CAREY
Where, you know, doctors are having -- they have a much larger caseload because they've got to meet certain income requirements and insurance only reimburse them a certain amount. And I don't know if Ken wants to jump in on this, if you have your own practice as a nurse practitioner, are you subject to those same time constraints?
REHM
Yeah. Sure. I want to hear from both Ken and Sandra.
MILLER
I don't think you have the same time constraints. I think most of nurse practitioners see patients in 15- to 20-minute blocks. So you can see three or four patients an hour. Physicians, on the other hand, if they have to keep up, if their salary is going to be dependent upon it, then what they do is they see more and more patients. And I can think of examples when I was in New Mexico where the family practice docs at the university were actually seeing patients probably every 10 minutes or so because they had to pull in a percentage of their salary.
MILLER
I think the problem that you run into with doing that -- and I do know another physician in New Mexico who sees patients every two to three minutes, and I'm just waiting for the date when he gets sued. He has five nurse practitioners waiting for -- working for him. But I think, you know, going in and seeing somebody in two to three minutes and then coming out and diagnosing and treating is -- I find that interesting.
REHM
Sandra, give us an idea of how long you spend with each patient. Then I want to hear from Dr. Blackwelder.
NETTINA
Well, fortunately in my office, we're allowed 20-minute appointments, which is adequate for, you know, a one-problem visit or following up on a couple of chronic conditions where patients are stable. But oftentimes, people have additional problems, and they want to take care of everything in one visit. And whether it be the nurse practitioners or the physicians, we're spending, you know, 40, 45 minutes with our patients.