Dr. Barton Hershfield, MD

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Tracking Outcomes Can Help Your Patients and Your Practice

Dr. Barton Hershfield, MD, Medical Cannabis Physicians of SWFL

  Medical cannabinoid physicians should do more than just issue patient certifications—they should also make product and dosing recommendations to help patients achieve maximum symptom reduction with minimum side effects.  Tracking outcomes can help the physician decide if a revision in treatment recommendations is advisable, and, subsequently, if the change has helped their patients obtain better results. Outcomes that can easily be tracked include the severity of specific symptoms using a 10 point scale.  The MME and LME doses of controlled medications being taken can also be tracked. This can be achieved by making an entry into the patient’s medical record, and reviewing the outcome data from one visit to the next.     Outcomes in a physician’s practice can be determined by creating a simple spreadsheet to calculate the change in symptom severity, and in MME and LME dosage, by entering the data before/without MMJ, and also with MMJ.  For example, patients in one practice have experienced an overall reduction in Insomnia of 87%, a reduction in Anxiety of 84%, and reduction in pain of 77%.  Opioid use (measured in MME’s) has been reduced by 57% and benzodiazepine use (measured in LME’s) has been reduced by 64%.  Additional data that can be tracked to help a physician know the demographics of their practice could include the patient’s gender, age, whether they are a military veteran, whether cannabis was used for their symptoms before they were certified to use MMJ, why they chose the physician’s practice, and anything else that is of interest to the physician.

After graduating from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Dr. Hershfield completed a residency there in Family Medicine, becoming board certified and recertifying 7 years later. However, he chose to practice Emergency Medicine, which he did for 25 years, in which he also became board certified, and recertified for 30 years. He subsequently worked as a cruise ship physician for 5 years, and then another 7 years practicing urgent care and medical pain management.  After seeing the profound benefit that close relatives with severe chronic pain and PTSD obtained from medical cannabis, Dr. Hershfield opened a solo cannabinoid medicine practice, where he has been practicing since 2019.  Like other members of the Florida Medical Cannabis Physicians Group of which he is an active member, he shares the core values of making the best possible cannabinoid medicine recommendations and of educating patients, and also shares their mission of trying to improve the medical cannabis climate in Florida through legislative and administrative advocacy.