WHY IS THE PHYSICIAN-PATIENT RELATIONSHIP IMPORTANT?
Many factors raise questions about the validity of the notion that the patient-physician relationship is fundamental to health. These include the fact that almost everyone will use more than one physician at any point in his or her life, the inability of even the most dedicated primary care physician to grasp (much less manage) the tremendous array of resources in any of his or her patients’ idiopathic systems, the terrible lack of coordination among providers and among information systems, and the lack of flexibility in most medical systems. The real responsibility and authority for health and health decisions must reside with the individual and the family, not in the connection with some segment of the resources it uses to pursue health. Healthcare providers of every stripe–including those of the Western scientific medicine stripe–need to value the contribution that many resources make to the health of people and families in the community. There is no one right way to get healthy o
