Well run practice group of competent medical professionals and helpful support staff.
Primary care is facing a crisis. Primary care docs only get paid for about 40% of what they spend time doing. The reimbursement rates for what primary care docs do get paid for are significantly lower than they are for specialists. The economics virtually demand primary care docs sprint through their day seeing as many patients as possible, dedicating as few minutes to each as they can get away with. These structural problems, and other concerns, mean the country is facing a primary care doc shortage of 50,000 practitioners over the next decade.
But here in Massachusetts, primary care in has been in crisis for years. If you're reading this review looking for a new primary care doc, you probably already knew that.
Pros:
Millview Medical, which is a Steward health care affiliated practice group under the direction of Christopher Joncas, MD, employs a small army of support staff to let the doctors do what they are there to do - practice medicine. The staff are generally kind, responsive, and competent. And while that should be the standard, it is, in actual fact, extraordinarily rare. The docs with whom I've interacted all have provided medically indicated and appropriate care - and if that sounds like damning with faint praise - it's not - competence is what I value above all else in a physician.
Cons:
I'd like to see them adopt the kind of patient portal other health care systems have (Partners has patient gateway, Caregroup has patient site) which allow patients to have access to all of their health records and securely electronic message providers. That is a massive capital expenditure and will, undoubtedly, have to come from Steward - hopefully meaningful use will spur them on to it. read more
