What makes exceptional primary care? Part 3

Pillar #3: Depth in the clinician-patient relationship

Depth is what drives a mutual understanding between a patient and their clinician. It’s how we unlock really thoughtful, personalized clinical decisions. And it’s a prerequisite to finding the unicorn that every health care org is seeking (and loves to talk about): Trust

One (obviously oversimplified) way I think about Depth is as an equation.

Depth = Time x (Curiosity + Knowledge).

Ideally, you need all three.

Time is the most important. While face time is crucial to early relationship building, I’ve also seen how low-intensity check-ins (like emails, SMS, etc) build intimacy and a sense of care over long periods of time. There are many ways to demonstrate care - we shouldn’t be limited by a clinic room.

Still, you can do a great deal of work by being genuinely curious and bringing context-specific knowledge to your patients.

Ex: A personal story. I was looking for a PCP recently, and I was particularly excited to meet one doc. While he gave me time (which created the potential for depth), his curiosity unfortunately ended with an extremely cursory survey of my diet and exercise habits, while missing the knowledge around my increased cardiovascular risk as a South Asian man. Even when I brought this up, I was met with minimization (another missed moment of curiosity). Needless to say, this wasn’t a great fit.