Today's Debate: Docs in a box

One of the greatest fears physicians have, I have learned, is of becoming mere cogs in the health care machine. (Aeromed has trademarked Doc In The Box for a line of document displays.)

A recent Wall Street Journal piece on "convenient care" demonstrated the problem and drew an immediate response.

Call it franchised care, call it corporate family practice, call it "doc in a box," it adds up to the same thing. By using technology wisely, corporations are transforming physicians from free agents to mere employees.

This process is going on underneath the debates about whether government or industry should run health care. And it may be a more important debate.

What doctors most want today is autonomy, but their lack of automation makes this impossibly expensive.

When state governments invest in health care technology, they see autonomy threatened just as they do when insurance carriers or hospital groups do it.

Studies claiming physicians using paper do just as well at diagnosing and treating their patients as those using computers, are beside the point. Health care is a system, your office is not the only piece of it.

The utter refusal of doctors to get their heads around this fact is what is killing their autonomy.