Today I met Dr. Amy Ship, a primary care physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, who was the recipient last month of the Compassionate Caregiver Award from the Kenneth B. Schwarz Center.
What a wonderful person. She's not involved in all the policy stuff, the "health 2.0" stuff, the "eHealth" stuff where I spend my time - she just wants to deliver care.
Amy and I were talking (very informally, like this incompetent informal photo :-)) about what we (all of us - that's you) can do to get everyone else out of the way so patients and clinicians can just do care.
One line in her acceptance speech: "There's no billing code for compassion." And that led to an idea.
We have an idea for a campaign to raise awareness about this. I'm sure somebody else has used this name, but to me it's about the doctor-patient relationship, so it should be called:
"Who Cares?"
Waddaya think?
Here's Amy's acceptance speech, which I first saw on Paul Levy's blog. It was so inspiring I called and dug her up. (Doncha just love how social media lets ideas spread??)
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Meeting Dr. Amy Ship - "There's no billing code for compassion"
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Wow! "It's all about connecting."
ReplyDeleteSo simple yet so powerful.
If only we had a huge group of Amy Ship's to take over palliative care of dementia victims in long term care facilities. I feel we would never hear Dr. Ship say - "No, those aren't signs of pain, that patient is just agitated." My current effort is to educate professionals and family members alike on the great possibility that many of the behaviors we see in dementia are likely pain indicators, not from psychotic events. We must Stop Pain in Dementia and no longer tolerate having our loved ones sedated into oblivion while their pain continues. Thank you, Dr. Ship, for your compassionate caregiving. Candy - http://www.dementiapain.blogspot.com