Healthcare System vs. Medical Care System:Lighten up Dr. Feld

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Stanley Feld MD,FACP,MACE

Healthcare System vs. Medical Care System

A very impressive and thoughtful blog Procurement Central said today “I highly recommend Dr. Stanley Feld’s blog for those interested in a deep dive on this important area.”

I very much appreciate the recognition from Procurement Central.

My goal is to get every thinking person that is affected or will be affected by the healthcare system working toward the solution of the healthcare systems problems. Every stakeholder is involved. In order to understand the solution one needs to take a “deep dive” into the factors that created the problem. Only then can one buy into the solution that will align every stakeholder’s incentives. It must be remembered that the “Patient is First”. Please do not think of my blog as a “deep dive”. This can scare you away because you might not have the time for. I have gotten this reaction from a person in organized medicine that runs the socioeconomic department of that organization. I imagine the same thing happens in insurance companies’ managers, and with government officials’, hospital systems officials’ and physicians’ office administrators. Everyone is very busy going to meetings.

Please think of my blog as an intellectual exercise that can be transformed into action. Everyone has a responsibility to understand what needs to be done for your health and well being in the future.

You will notice I always use the term healthcare system and not medical care system. Physicians’ deliver medical care. Medical care is excellent for acute illness and for correcting the complications of chronic disease. In my opinion, and the Institute of Medicine as well, we are not very good at preventing the complications of chronic disease. However, physicians all over the country are trying to learn. The distortions in the healthcare system have to be corrected in order to improve our excellent medical care delivery system. If the repair of the healthcare system is done correctly, the repair will reduce price of care, cure the problems of access to care, and correct the 45 million uninsured problem.

Lighten up

Both my wife Cecelia Feld a world class artist (www.Studio 7310.com) and my son Brad Feld (Feld Thoughts) have told me to lighten up a little. So here goes.

Father’s Day was great. We stayed at Brad and Amy’s house over the weekend. You need to understand that Brad was my tech support person from the time he was 13 years old until the time he was 30 years old. In 1977, he bought the first of the Apple II computers with his Bar Mitzvah money. I had to make an additional $1500 contribution for all the accessories we, absolutely, had to have. It was clearly the best investment I ever made. I not only received tech support for 17 years free, but Brad has blossomed into an information technology wizard. In the last 10 years it has been difficult to get tech support from my son. We have joked about it often. His standard answer has been, “he did not know how to do what I needed help with”. Incidentally, I never believed him but pretended to not get the message.

This Father’s Day was special. Brad is rooting for me and my blog. We sat for 1 hour going over details on how to improve my blog presentations. As some of you might know Brad is a master blogger with a huge audience. Amy found the following cartoon while reading the New Yorker during our tech support session. The cartoon is a riot!

The caption reads " For Father’s Day, I’m giving my dad an hour of free tech support."

Email

Dear Stanley:

A new comment has been submitted to your weblog "Repairing the Healthcare System," on the post "Do Complications of Chronic Disease really absorb Eighty Percent (80%) of the Healthcare Dollar?."

Stanley,
Great post.
Here’s my question.
Can the market be allowed to solve the problem? What if the cost scale for insurance was weighted based on the amount of preventative health steps one took?
What happens then?

Eric
The answer is the market can solve the problem! The government can not! The patient is the primary stakeholder and should make the market decision. However, they need to know what decisions to make and how to make them. There is enough information on the web presently to use as a resource if appropriately selected. I have given you a few clues to the solution already. I will put all the steps together as we get go along. The goal and purpose of the blog is to teach patients and futures patients what to do to fix the system. I hope the blog will also teach all the others stakeholders what to do, and how to stop spinning their wheels.

I need to have as many patients, future patients and physicians subscribe so that they understand the problem how we got here, and then understand the action they need to take toward the solution. Please encourage everyone you know to subscribe.

Thanks for your email Eric

Stanley Feld MD,FACP,MACE