Patients As Hamburgers

Most of the doctors I know went into medicine because they really truly wanted to help people. But medicine, long honored as a calling as well as a profession, is facing some tough new challenges. Many doctors are disillusioned or simply burnt out. Others have accepted their fates as interchangeable provider units.

The name of the game today is efficiency -- i.e., seeing as many patients as possible per hour, per workday, per month and per year. Doctors who have mastered this technique do well within the changing health care landscape. Doctors who don't are pariahs. So how does this affect you, the health care consumer? Truthfully, not very well...