Status Updates From The People's Hospital: Hope...

“Patients and doctors, nurses and social workers - most people who’ve entered an emergency room or a doctor’s office know something is wrong with healthcare in America today. Instead of correcting the problem, however, we’ve all decided to accept the issues as permanent… But the costs remain unaffordable… We Americans are suffering collectively from disaster syndrome.”

“I’d rather practice in a system focused on people over profit. Whether or not the country is ready for such a shift requires us to explore the real price of unaffordable heathcare.”

“Algorithmania is the unexamined use of clinical roadmaps… the compulsion to force patients onto a step-by-step decision tree when complexities in the illness or person’s life ought to keep them off. An algorithmaniac puts the doctor’s desire to give a quick and uncomplicated answer above the patient’s need for help.”

“The patient-doctor relationship was so complex that it required connecting with people at multiple levels that went beyond science. People’s circumstances - like how a bus schedule might govern their lives - could make as much a difference in a therapy’s effectiveness as the therapy itself. Science didn’t easily allow for those considerations of context.”

“To receive good medical care that is streamlined and straightforward, multiple factors must come together. Depending on how someone receives insurance, a patient has to make sure their job remains steady, or has to stay married, or has to make sure they earn enough for co-pays and treatment. Any disruption of this delicate order can result in the illness running rampant… when the patient is most vulnerable.”

The state of healthcare is a systems level failure