Let’s talk for a minute about medical care vs healthcare. My friends at the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, an organization to which every physician should belong, have made the distinction between these two phrases very clear. Physicians, after all, deliver medical care to their patients. They do not deliver “health” to patients. A patient’s health condition is partly their responsibility. It is an individual responsibility for all of us to take the best care of ourselves that we can.

To place a patient’s health responsibility into the hands of the physician is to invite Population Health Management as a strategy. It embraces the collective and completely neglects the individual. (To learn more about Public Health Management, view my Sept. 9, 2016 blog.)

I thank my friends at the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons for making this very clear in their last annual meeting, the difference between medical care and health.

Thank you for joining me, we’ll see you next time.