Tag: Healthcare system

Health Care, Disagree Better

Jul 25, 2023

BY KIM BELLARD

On one of the Sunday morning news programs Governors Spence Cox (UT) and Jared Polis (CO) promoted the National Governors Association initiative Disagree Better. The initiative urges that we practice more civility in our increasingly civilized political discourse. It’s hard to argue the point (although one can question why NGA thinks two almost indistinguishable, middle-aged white men should be the faces of the effort), but I found myself thinking, hmm, we really need to do that in healthcare too.

No one seems happy with the U.S. healthcare system, and no one seems to have any real ideas about how to change that, so we spend a lot of time pointing fingers and deciding that certain parties are the “enemy.” That might create convenient scapegoats and make good headlines, but it doesn’t do much to solve the very real problems that our healthcare system has. We need to figure out how to disagree better.

I’ll go through three cases in point:

Health Insurers versus Providers of Care

On one side, there are the health care professionals, institutions, organizations that are involved in delivering care to patients, and on the other side there are health insurers that pay them. Both sides think that the other side is, essentially, trying to cheat them.

For example, prior authorizations have long been a source of complaint, with new reports coming out about its overuse in Medicaid, Medicare Advantage, and commercial insurance. Claim denials seem equally as arbitrary and excessive. Health insurers argue that such efforts are necessary to counter constantly rising costs and well documented, widespread unnecessary care.

The Disease Killing Healthcare and Causing Physician Burnout

May 17, 2023• 1

BY SCOTT MACDIARMID

We have a healthcare crisis . . . and the crisis is now. Costs are soaring out of control, threatening the financial health of individuals and our nation. Quality of care is deteriorating, in spite of “world class care” signs seemingly on every corner. And physicians are checking out and burning out. I believe it’s one of the greatest societal issues of our day.

So, you may be wondering: How in the heck did we get ourselves into such a mess? In the greatest country in the world who spends the most on healthcare and is regularly bragging on how great it is, what happened?

Experts and pundits alike tout a litany of reasons. Increasing life expectancy, our reliance on sophisticated and expensive diagnostic tests and treatments, the costs of big pharma, duplication of care, fraud and abuse—the list goes on. Although these are all important contributors, none of them points to the underlying disease that’s killing healthcare.

The healthcare system in some respects is like the human body. It has seven systems, and the health and survival of each is largely dependent on the health of the others, much like the inter-dependent relationship of the organs of the human body. For example, if your liver or kidneys fail, your body’s health is severely impacted, even if your heart and lungs are functioning normally.

Healthcare: Make Better Mistakes

May 16, 2023

BY KIM BELLARD

I saw an expression the other day that I quite liked. I’m not sure who first said it, and there are several versions of it, but it goes something like this: let’s make better mistakes tomorrow.

Boy howdy, if that’s not the perfect motto for healthcare, I don’t know what is.

Health is a tricky business. It’s a delicate balancing act between – to name a few — your genes, your environment, your habits, your nutrition, your stress, the health and composition of your microbiome, the impact of whatever new microbes are floating around, and, yes, the health care you happen to receive.

Health care is also a tricky business. We’ve made much progress in medicine, developed deeper insights into how our bodies work (or fail), and have a multitude of treatment options for a multitude of health problems. But there’s a lot we still don’t know, there’s a lot we know but aren’t actually using, and there’s an awful lot we still don’t know.

It’s very much a human activity. Different people experience and/or report the same condition differently, and respond to the same treatments differently. Everyone has unique comorbidities, the impact of which upon treatments is still little understood. And, of course, until/unless AI takes over, the people responsible for diagnosing, treating, and caring for patients are very much human, each with their own backgrounds, training, preferences, intelligence, and memory – any of which can impact their actions.

All of which is to say: mistakes are made. Every day. By everyone.

We Hold These Truths

Jul 5, 2022• 1

BY KIM BELLARD

It’s July 4^th – Independence Day for those of you who remember your U.S. history. There’s already too much talk about loss of rights, political tyranny, militias, even succession, and I don’t want to wade any further into those troubled waters. But I thought I could at least try to reimagine what a Declaration of Independence might look like if it was aimed at the American healthcare system.

I’m no Thomas Jefferson, or even a Roger Sherman, but here goes:

Will Microbes Finally Force Modernization of the American Health Care System?

Feb 14, 2022

BY MIKE MAGEE

Science has a way of punishing humans for their arrogance.

In 1996, Dr. Michael Osterholm found himself rather lonely and isolated in medical research circles. This was the adrenaline-infused decade of blockbuster pharmaceuticals focused squarely on chronic debilitating diseases of aging.

And yet, there was Osterholm, in Congressional testimony delivering this message: “I am here to bring you the sobering and unfortunate news that our ability to detect and monitor infectious disease threats to health in this country is in serious jeopardy…For 12 of the States or territories, there is no one who is responsible for food or water-borne surveillance. You could sink the Titanic in their back yard and they would not know they had water.”

Osterholm’s choice of metaphor perhaps reflected his own frustration and inability to alter the course of the medical-industrial complex despite microbial icebergs directly ahead.

What a Waste of a Healthcare System

Jan 11, 2022

By KIM BELLARD

An essay in Aeon had me at the title: The Waste Age. The title was so evocative of the world we live in that I almost didn’t need to read further, but I’m glad I did, and I encourage you to do the same. Because if we don’t learn to deal with waste – and, as the author urges, design for it – our future looks pretty grim.

Healthcare included.

The Simpson’s Explain Healthcare

Jan 4, 2022

By KIM BELLARD

Happy New Year! We’re starting 2022 full of hope and renewed optimism. Oh, wait; not so much. We’re not only still in a pandemic, the Omicron variant is the most infectious one yet. Daily cases are setting new records. Our hospitals are full again. Our beleaguered healthcare workers – the ones who haven’t already thrown in the towel – are at their breaking points. Two years in, and we still don’t have enough tests. We’re in the greatest public health crisis in a century, yet our legislators are taking power away from public health officials, and their angry constituents are forcing many of those officials to quit. We have effective vaccines, but millions still refuse to take them.

The Simpsons – especially, Homer — has the right word for this: D’oh!

Rooting For Schumpter’s Gale

Dec 28, 2021

By KIM BELLARD

Not familiar with Schumpeter’s gale? You may be more familiar with the term “creative destruction.” Schumpeter’s “gale of creative destruction” is the inevitable “process of industrial mutation that continuously revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.”

We need a Schumpeter’s gale in healthcare.

You Want to 3D Print What

Oct 5, 2021

By KIM BELLARD

You know we’re living in the 21^st century when people are 3D printing chicken and cooking it with lasers. They had me at “3D printing chicken.”

An article in NPJ Science of Food explains how scientists combined additive manufacturing (a.k.a, 3D printing) of food with “precision laser cooking,” which achieves a “higher degree of spatial and temporal control for food processing than conventional cooking methods.” And, oh, by the way, the color of the laser matters (e.g., red is best for browning).

Very nice, but wake me when they get to replicators…which they will. Meanwhile, other people are 3D printing not just individual houses but entire communities. It reminds me that we’ve still not quite realized how revolutionary 3D printing can and will be, including for healthcare.

The New York Times profiled the creation of a village in Mexico using “an 11-foot-tall three-dimensional printer.” The project, being built by New Story, a nonprofit organization focused on providing affordable housing solutions, Échale, a Mexican social housing production company, and Icon, a construction technology company, is building 500 homes. Each home takes about 24 hours to build; 200 have already been built.

A Healthcare System, If We Can Keep It

Mar 18, 2020

By KIM BELLARD

We are in strange days, and they are only going to get stranger as COVID-19 works its way further through our society. It makes me think of Benjamin Franklin’s response when asked what kind of nation the U.S. was going to be: “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

The versions of that response that COVID-19 have me wondering about are: “A federal system, if we can keep it,” and, more specifically, “a healthcare system, if we can keep it.” I’ll talk about each of those in the context of the pandemic.

In times of national emergencies — think 9/11, think World Wars — we usually look to the federal government to lead. The COVID-19 pandemic has been declared a national emergency, but we’re still looking for strong federal leadership. We have the Centers for Disease Control, infectious disease experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci, and a White House coronavirus task force. But real national leadership is lacking.