Dr. Derrick DeSilva interviewed me yesterday on his radio show, “Ask Dr. DeSilva”. The radio show is on the Internet and reaches several thousands of listeners. We talked about the state of health care delivery in our nation today and my 8-point plan for change. The more we talked the more I realized how much Dr. DeSilva and I have in common. We are both clinicians in the trenches slugging it out day after day to provide good care to our patients. We both agree that no one in Washington is listening to us about what it takes to practice medicine today. We are both fed up with the politics and profitability of health care.
On a more positive note, we are both healers as well as physicians. We try to get in to the souls of our patients and help them to heal and be well, not just healthy. Wellness is the ultimate goal for all of us. It requires an active participation by patients to get their mind, body and spirit to connect creating something greater than the individual parts.
Dr. DeSilva has a wonderful Chinese proverb on his website:
The inferior physician treats the disease once it occurs.
The mediocre physician prevents the disease from coming back.
The superior physician prevents the disease from ever occurring.
Success in healthcare should be measured on the state of wellness for the patient, not on whether the illness is cured or the injury is healed. We have become a sick care society. Enough! We all need to become our own healers of the mind, body and spirit. That is the cornerstone of being a good healthcare steward.
Dr. Dale
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"We all need to become our own healers of the mind, body and spirit." This is a phrase that I wish was taken more to heart by patients and clinicians alike. Unfortunately, because of the current crisis in health care, we see primary care offices turning into production factories churning out upwards of 30+ patients per provider per day. This accounts to less patient-provider interaction which equates to even less time to focus on preventative medicine. In addition, many patients still have the mentality that health care is the clinician's responsibility and not his/her own. Yet in terms of dollars and cents, it is preventative medicine that improves quality and quantity of healthy years while reducing financial burden. Of course the key players in helping to make it possible must be the public and private sectors as well as clinicians and patients. As I see no quick fix to the solution anytime soon, perhaps one avenue might be "sick" clinics (as the majority of clinics seem to be today) and "well" clinics (where a clinician can truly become "superior" healer).
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