Dr. Ananthakumar Thillainathan is an internal medicine specialist and a Hackensack University Medical Center graduate. As the owner of MDCARENOW LLC, he has strong opinions on what techniques are used in his field and what types of results they yield. He talks more about the trends today, the underlying belief that anchors his career, and what it means to be forward-thinking in internal medicine.
Trends Today
The most common trends today skew toward the customization of medicine. More and more every day, internal medicine specialists are being asked to rely less on broad assumptions about how different people react to different treatments. It’s an important step in the right direction, particularly when a global pandemic taught us that one size definitely doesn’t fit all.
Forward-Thinking
With the endless technology and research studies available these days, it would be easy to think that the path forward is clear. In reality, all of the information, products, and platforms today can muddle the system more than it fixes it. Doctors and nurses aren’t always receptive to changes in their routine, and their reluctance can end up causing the best-laid plans to go awry.
Dr. Ananthakumar Thillainathan knows that forward-thinking isn’t about embracing every new trend but about being aware of what’s on the horizon and how it’s implemented to alter the life of a patient. From there, he can assess the probability that each individual tool will help him improve his practice. Unfortunately, hospital administrators and doctors don’t always consider a new approach to medicine from every angle, which is often how organizations land themselves in a crisis.
Underlying Belief
Forward-thinking these days doesn’t mean spending the most money on equipment or poring over every new report. While these things certainly can help a healthcare facility, they don’t always equate to success. For Dr. Thillainathan, he starts with an underlying belief that it’s better to treat the whole person. This idea, which may not sound very advanced at first glance, is groundbreaking when considering the stakes. Few doctors will admit to treating just the symptoms of a disease, but it is what they do in practice.
A healthy core can and will fare better over time, but many healthcare providers are only interested in what’s wrong at a surface level. This may sound like an odd philosophy from someone who runs an urgent care center, as it’s Dr. Ananthakumar Thillainathan and his staff’s job to treat a variety of short-term complaints. However, he ultimately knows that if he goes a step further, he might be able to curb how many patients have to come to a center in the first place.
Internal medicine can be tricky, requiring a doctor to think at least a few steps ahead in a very long game. Dr. Ananthakumar Thillainathan applauds those who can keep up in an ever-changing field without falling prey to bad habits.