Social Responsibility | Esha Abrol's Blog

After complaining and complaining even more about the poor service and advice I continuously receive from my family healthcare practitioner, I decided to do a little more research to find out why and try to explore opportunities on how to fix it!

I was quite astounded with what I found. Wanted to share my research findings and my thoughts:

Firstly, let’s look at how the compensation model for doctors works:

According to The Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care, the average family doctor makes $351,000/year. The compensation model is quite interesting. Forty-five (45%) percent of doctors (I believe this is all family doctors) are compensated by a fee-for-service model. Plain and simple, they make $25 per visit, regardless of how long the visit is; they also can make money through receiving a cut from referrals.

A closer look at the compensation model vs. the average annual compensation

Let’s use the average compensation number, rounded to $350,000 and dig deeper on what it takes to achieve this amount:

1) Let’s say approximately 15% of total compensation came from referrals. So, $50,000 of the total $350,000, leaving $300,000 to earn from patient visits

2) If they make $25/visit, they need 12,000 visits per year to reach $300,000
3) After vacation time, after 49 working weeks per year, working five days a week, a doctor would have to see app 245 patients a week, or 49 a day!

Based on these numbers, a doctor in Ontario needs to see an average of 49 clients per day to achieve the average compensation amount of $300,000.

No wonder I am always rushed out of the doctor’s office, no wonder it’s always full, no wonder he never does any research or provides alternatives, he doesn’t have the time!

The Improvement Opportunity
My no means do I want to sound ungrateful, I am a proud Canadian, and proud of the idea of a free healthcare system. However, there are some serious issues that need to be addressed. Because we don’t directly pay, I don’t believe that means we should be OK with receiving terrible service. Poor service from your healthcare practitioner and poor service from a cashier at Wal-mart are both irritating. However, one of them can possibly cost you your life, cause a unhealthy society, and ultimately cost the healthcare system more.

Healthcare practitioners play a vital role in the condition of our health, well-being, our futures, and our overall society. The fact that they are given hopes of a promising career, which will guarantee financial stability, seems to have led to doctors offices to over-commit to the number of patients they see to meet their sales targets, which is adversely affecting us all. They are left with little or no time to do research, talk to us to get to ensure the correct diagnosis is being recommended, speak to us about alternative medicine, perhaps even refer us to natural remedies because there’s no financial incentive in it for them. This is just scary! This is leading to misguided or the wrong diagnosis and confusion for the patient on what in fact is good for their health and what isn’t. I’ve heard many people tell me about medication they take, including medication with serious, long-term side-effects, for minor health issues. When I ask them, “why?” Their response, “My doctor recommended it.”

Aren’t we supposed to be able to trust our doctors? Aren’t healthcare practitioners supposed to help prevent illness, not just treat them? This requires more time and research, with the current compensation model, doctors may feel pressure to meet their targets, they may find it challenging to maintain the work-life balance, which is causing them to rush through seeing as many patients, causing society more harm than good!

The Ministry of Health needs to step in to introduce a metric in the compensation model that will measure the quality of service and delivery being offered.

What I did about it
I recently gave up on my family doctor for regular visits and started to see a naturopathic doctor. She reminded me of the importance of doctors and healthcare. She exceeds my expectations every time, goes out of her way to look for alternatives for me, and sends me e-mails messages, following up with me. Now, she may be an exception because of her genuine passion for her work, but my intention is to illustrate the difference and for you to imagine how our province would be with more doctors like her. The key difference: caring!
I think that there are many health practitioners that are still passionate about their vital role in saving lives and, more importantly preventing harm. They are not recognized enough for what they do. I want take this opportunity to thank them for what they do, not just for their individual patients, but for society and our world. They are truly inspiring people, and wonderful examples for entrepreneurs to emulate in terms of quality of customer service and doing your job to contribute to the common good of humankind, and think about how it impacts the world.

I was watching a documentary called “The Corporation” recently. It made me realize, I don’t think we stop to think about the strides we’ve made in how we conduct business and the growing development of socially responsible behavior. Sure, there’s progress to be made, but we’ve come a long way!

How important is social responsibility and what’s the impact? Let’s look at some examples of how the word “corporation” has become so tainted:

1) Let’s look at the petrochemical era, year 1940, when the discovery of synthetic chemicals was made – that new chemicals could be fabricated at an unlimited scale out of the petroleum molecule. For pretty cheap, too. For example, pesticides, like DDT, which was dusted on people to stand typhus. It wasn’t until years later, after large amounts of data could be accumulated and studied, this era was recognized for its effects: cancer, birth defects, etc . Do you think the companies knew all along?

2) Then, rBGH, an artificial growth hormone injected in cows. It’s known to cause disease in cows, which in turn causes increased bacteria in milk – humans consume antibiotics through milk, creating resistance… all for short-term profits.

3) Sweatshops.

4) Not as dramatic as the previous examples, but I need to add Greek yoghurt (aka strained yoghurt) to this list! It’s marketed as a thicker yoghurt and more expensive than the regular stuff. For those who don’t know their yoghurts as well, as per our friends from Wikipedia, Greek yoghurt is:

“yoghurt which has been strained in a cloth or paper bag or filter to remove the whey, giving a consistency between that of yoghurt and cheese, while preserving yoghurt’s distinctive sour taste. Like many yoghurts, strained yoghurt is often made from milk which has been enriched by boiling off some of the water content, or by adding extra butterfat and powdered milk.”

When you read the ingredients label on most Greek yoghurts in the grocery store, you’ll notice that almost all of the top brands add corn starch, which is a thickening agent. So, you’re actually buying normal yoghurt, which has had a bunch of things added to it,like the corn starch. The marketing of the products implies differently, resulting in implied health benefits which may actually be false – the added ingredients may even cause more harm than good! I would classify deceptive business activities like this as socially irresponsible.
In today’s world, the good news is, consumers now have the power to educate themselves, which has had great impact on the developments we see. It’s really not that hard to gather info either. You don’t need to be an early adopter, or pinning on Pinterest to know the brands you bring home and what you’re consuming.

To be fair, I also think that “corporations” have made enormous stride in improving how they conduct business. Young business leaders have the knowledge and education that may not have been available decades ago. Back when I was a student, the commerce program in which I as enrolled included a required class on social responsibility.

A thought I’d like to leave you with:

At the end of the documentary, CEO of interface, a carpet company who changed how they did business once they were made aware of the harmful environmental effects they were having, raised a thought, “Some products can be made more sustainably. Those that can’t, maybe they shouldn’t be made at all.”