I’m not exactly sure why; maybe it’s because of my carefully tracked reading habits? Then again, maybe it’s because of the specific types of credit cards that I have, a much more likely scenario. But either way, I have been receiving unsolicited, unpaid for copies of Wired magazine for the last several months.

For those of you who are not familiar with Wired, it’s a magazine dedicated to being just that, wired.  Don’t confuse the new Wired with the old meaning of wired which was often used when referring to an  over-energetic kid, like, “That kid is WIRED.”  Of course, that version of wired has now evolved into “That kid has ADD or ADHD.”  And no, it is also not the old reference to someone who is personally connected.  “You need to meet Tom. He is totally WIRED.”

This WIRED is the computerized wired.

One of the articles that captured my interest this month had a lead story by Bill Wasik that was promoted like this:   “In our houses, cars, and factories, we’re surrounded by tiny, intelligent devices that capture data about how we live and what we do.  Now they are beginning to talk to one another.  Soon we’ll be able to choreograph them to respond to our needs, solve our problems, even save our lives.”

In view of the fact that my Verizon cell phone records are being data scanned by the government, and my phone can tell anyone where I’m located every second; that my internet typing strokes are being monitored by secret cookies and program language that is hidden in every program; and that my Social Security number is with virtually every vendor in the entire world, it struck me as kind of funny that these intrusions into my privacy by Big Brothers of all kinds could actually be programmed to be helpful.   If anything, I’m been regularly thinking that we should be a little paranoid that they might be programmed to subtly do the exact opposite.

With 7.5 billion people consuming Mother Earth at nearly the speed of light and with 7,000 to 10,000 people turning 65 on a daily basis in the United States, it just struck me as odd that life enhancing peepers, drones, bots and apps would become popular.

Here, however, is a sneak peek into what our connectivity might end up meaning to us.    “Imagine a house with a nervous system, where the sprinklers take orders from the moisture sensors.”    Here’s another quote from the article, “This is the language of the future; tiny, intelligent things all around us, coordinating their activities.  Coffee pots that talk to alarm clocks.  Thermostats that talk to motion sensors . . . we are seeing the dawn of an era when the most mundane items in our lives can talk wirelessly among themselves, performing tasks on command, giving us data we’ve never had before.”  (I think the Japanese already have toilet seats that do all of this?)

The folks that do this SmartThings work are referring to this phenomenon as the Sensor Revolution, “a vast ensemble that can be choreographed.”

The article became more interesting to me when it began looking at the medical applications like GE’s fully monitored beds being tested at Mt Sinai Medical Center in New York City or “a home medical monitoring system that didn’t just feed back data from diabetic patients but adjusted the treatment regimen as the data demanded.”

I’ve attended lectures and workshops on nanotechnology, on DNA analytics, and on numerous other medically oriented predictive devices and future accomplishments.  I’ve seen ears and livers actually being grown in laboratories, but the one thing that made the most sense for me came from MIT almost a dozen years ago.  They were miniaturizing all types of monitoring devices so that old people could remain living independently in their homes while being monitored 24/7.

Hook me up, baby.   I’m here for the duration.

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That title is not the usual saying, but in my case, it is right on the money. When my kids were born, I can honestly say that I loved absolutely every phase of their childhood, adolescence and now, adulthood. Don’t get me wrong, there were some rough patches along the way: tongue stuck to a street sign, hit by a truck, wild parties that were discovered after the fact, flooded bathrooms, but nothing that we didn’t get through in due course. Both kids ended up as fun, warm, loving, adults, great leaders and wonderful parents. They truly are the greatest and most rewarding part of my life.

Ten years ago, however, some things began to change. They had kids, and it was my chance to do it all over again! No one could ever have explained to me how challenging it would be to be a good parent, nor how incredible it would be to be an ornery and loving grandparent. It’s a feeling that is impossible to describe, and my view of it all is that I am literally getting to go around for the second time, but with a lot more gusto, more fun, less pressure, and all the love that I have in me.

The other day my six-year-old granddaughter said, “Poppa, how old will you be when I’m all grown up?” I turned to her and gently said, “Honey, how old am I now?” “If you add twenty or so years to that number, you’ll have a good idea how old I’ll be.” She concentrated heavily on the math, and finally I said, “Lucy, there’s more than a good chance that I’ll be gone by the time you’re all grown up.” She looked at me and with complete sincerity said, “Oh, Poppa that makes me sad.” To which I replied, “Baby, that makes me sad, too, but I’ll always be with you in your heart.”

Leaving at some point is actually part of the gig, and I truly want to leave them with good memories of me because we are all on the same train. We just get off at different stops. In my case with the age gap that existed between my grandparents and me, I feel blessed that I had any time with them at all. You see, my mom was the youngest girl of the eight siblings. My grandparents died when I was 5, 9, 13 and 26, but each one of them is still alive in me on so many levels.

The grandparent who is barely a memory for me was my mom’s dad. Even though I don’t remember him, my relatives tell me that I inherited his musical ability, his generosity, his smarts and his sense of style. (That dude was a sharp dresser!) From my mom’s mom, I acquired my ability to manage money, to appreciate sunsets, and to keep life simple. My dad’s mom was a loving person, but, my oh my, was she a worry wart! (What, me worry?) And finally, my dad’s dad was definitely the most socially liberal, the most fun, the most outrageous and the warmest. You see, with me, it’s like the old spaghetti sauce commercial: “It’s all in there,” and my relationships with all of them were incredibly important.

So, to the five little birds that are beginning to eye up the ground and think about flying, at least to the next branch, just take a minute to ask me. Let me help you avoid some of the mistakes and pitfalls that I’ve experienced. Let me teach you some short cuts and insist on the right long cuts. Let me tell you what is really fun and what is not, what is really important and what is not. Truthfully, I’ve been there, and I’ve done that, and, just like my grandparents before me, I’m only here to help.

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Finally, someone has agreed that it’s not a good thing to have an adult COACH belittle, verbally abuse, and denigrate his players by screaming explicative’s, throwing balls at their heads and faces, and using homophobic slurs to describe their performance.   Thank goodness I have lived long enough for someone to stand up and say that this type of COACHING is not acceptable behavior.  Unfortunately, as a Baby Boomer, I’ve seen this scenario dozens of times in dozens of situations, and the only good thing that has come out of it for me is that I am passionate about anti-bullying.
Mike’s dad, also a basketball stand-out, has the dubious distinction of being the only ANNOUNCER ever thrown out of a game by the NBA.  It seems to me that the acorn didn’t fall far from the tree.  Problem is, in Mike Senior’s life-time, coaches; were given a free ride when it came to this type of abuse.  How many times have I seen even midget football coaches dragging their players around by the face masks, screaming expletives at them and acting like idiots on the sidelines?  Short answer?  Too many.   It was almost as if many of the coaching playbooks had suggestions like this:  Belittle, malign, demean, debase and humiliate your team because that will make them men.
Unfortunately, in certain circumstances,  that was all that the players had ever experienced and then, they became coaches themselves, and not unlike an abused child who knows no other way to impart discipline, they  continued the circle of abuse with their players.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve met orchestral conductors, math teachers and bosses who did everything but throw the ball in your face, too, and the result?  Well, sometimes the team won the championship, but decades later when they get together to discuss their abusive coaches they say things like, “Yeah, we won, but he was a jerk.”
I’m not sure what human behavior specialists, or even animal right activists say about these types of leaders, but I’ve seen it in the operating room, in traffic jams, at lines in the airport and even in fancy restaurants.  When frustration levels go up, some folks in charge retaliate by attacking, and when they get caught, they are flabbergasted.  “What did I do wrong?” they say.  (I’m sure that they probably were treated even worse.)
So, where does Mike Rice go now?  He was a Divison 1 coach . . . maybe the university in Florida that named their stadium after the company that owns for-profit prisons, the same company that has been written up numerous times for abusing prisoners, maybe they  will want to hire him?  Just think, if Sadam Hussein hadn’t been taken out, his professional soccer players were tortured and beaten if they lost games.  Mike would probably  have fit in well in Afghanistan, the Middle East or parts of Africa where beheading, limb removal and torture are still the norm.

Oh, wait a minute, didn’t one of Notre Dame’s coaches get reprimanded for abusing players, in “Under The Tarnished Dome,”  this book said that Holtz . . . abused his players at Notre Dame to the point of spitting in one’s face.  And isn’t he now a highly paid sports commentator? Maybe that’s Mike’s  ticket? To once again, follow in his father’s footsteps and become a commentator for the NBA?  Beat up kids and become a talking head.

Seriously, I have no idea what is going to have to happen to get people like this out of the business of education, coaching or youth anything, but it does seem to me that ESPN should continue to broadcast videos like this one and, not unlike when the KKK was exposed by the media , these abusive people would have their moment of fame.
As a teacher, when things didn’t go well, it was because of ME, not them.

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Last night I received an E-mail from Carnegie Mellon University inviting me to the Innovation in Health Care Technology Conference.  When I read the small print, I saw that it was for the next day, April 5th.   I wasn’t sure if I had been invited because I am an alumnus, a healthcare consultant and entrepreneur or because I write a blog, but upon arrival, my admission ID said, “Nick Jacobs – PRESS.” 

After looking at the program which included discussions on:  Healthcare Policy, Bio-pharma, Health Care IT, Entrepreneurship and numerous other intellectual topics, I responded positively to the invitation and left my condo this morning with high hopes of being academically challenged and informed. 

As a graduate student at CMU back in the late eighties and early nineties, my most often asked question to our Dean was “Why is this all so quantitative?”  Kind of like when I began running hospitals and kept asking, “Why do you do things like this?”  It has been a subject that I’ve revisited numerous times, “quantitative vs. qualitative,” and it continues to be a source of severe discomfort for me personally. 

The irony for me is that everything I read about good leaders comes back to the fact that the best of the best have tremendous qualitative skills, skills that are heavily weighted in emotional quotient capabilities, yet we dedicate so much academic time to “the failed promise of technology.”

To my dismay, the speakers talked about things like quantum mechanics, complexity theory, quantum physics and quantum biology.  In fact, the only glimmer of hope that I had was when one of the speakers listed the word music on his opening slide. 

He discussed Schrödinger’s Proposal, the great thought experiment that puts forth a theory that involved a cat in a box.  (From Wikipedia:  a cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internal monitor detects radioactivity (i.e. a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead. This poses the question of when exactly quantum superposition ends and reality collapses into one possibility or the other.  (Get it?) 

Our speaker then showed a cartoon of another cat with a mouse in the box and the mouse was holding a hammer to break into the flask of poison.  Although his point was scientific and dealt with quantum superposition, as a qualitative guy, all that I could think about was the fact that the mouse was gonna be dead either way! 

Our MD/PhD went on to say that Chemo Therapy is always tail chasing where the cancer is not cured, just slowed down only to grow again, sad.  But most importantly, he suggested that, “Personalized medicine won’t work as a business model.” Again, his supposition was that it will continue to cost a billion dollars to create a drug and with personalized medicine, enough people will NOT need that drug to make the venture financially positive.  (So much for doing the right thing for individual people.)

When I asked him about his music slide, hoping to hear about the vibration of proteins in the healing process, he simply said that he likes playing the guitar and often wondered what type of music a DNA strand would make.

Not to make light of extensive cerebral capabilities, it all just made me cheerless as I listened to these very bright people continue to pursue only their quantitative capabilities: IT, Biotech, and Pharma.  They’re still  missing the nuances of Integrative Medicine, unconditional love, and self-worth as potential benefits in our healthcare world.  

“The Failed Promise of Technology.” 

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One of the things that I get to do while consulting all over the country is to periodically attend lectures about health. Because of my interests in non-traditional, ancient medicine practices that often work better than some new medical treatments, I get to attend some pretty interesting presentations, the type that you’re not likely to see on the Discovery Channel anytime in the near future. One of the last talks that I heard in the interesting category was about primitive food.

The presenter, a Harvard M.D., used the descriptive word primitive in only the best possible context. It was about the kind of food that people ate before big business, bad science and deceptive marketing got involved. It was about pure food, nature’s food, unadulterated food. It was about natural foods: meat and milk from cows that graze in fields, chickens that don’t live in cages; he discussed real butter and milk that is not pasteurized, insects, fish and other sea creatures, whole grains, and pure water.

This cardiologist started out with a series of photographs of what people’s faces looked like in the 30’s. I’ll admit they were not all models, but there was a certain beauty, a quality that is not seen much anymore.  These were the faces of people who were not consuming modern chemically treated foods that encourage shelf-life, kill predator insects or thrive during a drought: no hydrogenated fats or MSG, no genetically altered corn, and no high fructose corn syrup.

After each picture of the faces of those eating natural foods, he showed us pictures of people who grew up eating the altered, chemically produced food.  To the majority of us in attendance, those pictures were very surprising.

The crux of his presentation was that back in the 30’s a very curious dentist noticed something about people and the impact of what they ate on the formation of their facial bone structure.  The bone formation in their faces had changed dramatically. This doctor then traveled the world in order to substantiate his findings. The first place that he visited was Switzerland: not developed, modernized Switzerland, but some tiny little village tucked in a mountain pass that was only accessible by foot and couldn’t be reached at all in the winter. When he got there he found the people were living on only locally and naturally produced food–dairy products, grains and meat.

This is where things gets interesting. Their faces were full, and their teeth were perfect. They were happy, healthy and fertile. In other parts of the country where sweets and processed foods were more prevalent, the people had thinner jaws and plenty of cavities. The bone structure of the faces had actually changed over a few generations, and there was not enough room for all of their teeth. So, he decided to keep traveling and went to Africa, the South Pacific, Alaska and several other remote locations where he discovered exactly the same thing, Natural foods–fuller faces; processed foods–thinner faces, tooth decay, infertility and not enough room for their teeth, hence the need for braces.  

By the end of this lecture, our presenting cardiologist had me convinced that I should consider switching to eating seal stomachs, grub worms, pig tails or even fish heads as long as the food was not adulterated, not injected with preservatives, chemicals, artificial colors, sugar, corn syrup and antibiotics. The people who ate primitive foods were happier and healthier, sexier and had prettier smiles; their faces were full and their teeth fit in their mouth.

As I sit here and contemplate our various food groups: artificially flavored chips, injected beef, chemical-laden white bread, sodas containing a chemical used as a fire retardant, make-believe spray cheese, factory-produced chicken eggs, and enough corn syrup to float the Titanic, I now understand why my dentist had to pull my wisdom teeth.

Bottom line? Eat natural stuff. You’ll be sexier!

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Modern Healthcare’s February 4th, 2013 issue was titled, In Denial.  It was about immigration reform and the fact that health coverage will, at the present time, not be offered to those 11 plus million immigrants who will be permitted to get in the queue to become legalized citizens.

According to the article “Proponents of giving limited healthcare benefits to currently illegal immigrants argue that doing so would alleviate some problems that affect everyone and could reduce costs.  The number of uninsured residents would fall much closer to zero; reimbursement for hospitals and health centers would improve; and insurance costs could fall as the younger and healthier immigrants join the insurance pool.”

However, both the Senate and President Obama’s proposals do not include any extended benefits.  Unfortunately, because a large number of these uninsured and currently illegal immigrants are being treated at America’s Community Health Centers, it will put excessive burdens on those organizations and emergency rooms across the United States.

One way to address the disparity of the uninsured, some suggest would be for the government to reinstate special payments to hospitals.  These benefits would be directed specifically for illegal immigrant care provided in those emergency rooms.  To put the number of uninsured in prospective, California has 2.55mm, Texas has 1.65mm, Florida with 825,000mm, NewYork with 625,000 and New Jersey and Illinois with 550,000 and 525,000 respectively.  The remainder of the other 4.25mm immigrants are then in the other states of the United States.

The fundamental question for both parties is one of philosophy and math.  We know, for example, that historically about 7% of our population is consuming approximately 80% of our healthcare dollars, specifically, our Medicare healthcare dollars.  But there is also a question of the conflicting philosophies of saving everyone at any cost while not acknowledging the acceptance of our own mortality.

There is another sensitive philosophical and political conflict regarding taking care of our fellow man.  If we simply do the math, we begin to see that some relatively logical changes could have a very significant impact on the numbers, but then the questions come down to education, intelligence, greed, power, control, religious beliefs and a myriad of other human realities that separate us from the other animals in both good and bad ways.

As a country our decisions not to treat mental illness and to continue to keep all drugs in the illegal category,  have  resulted in our having more people incarcerated per thousand than any other G8 economic power country.  We incarcerate at a rate that is four times the World average. With less than 5% of the world’s population, we incarcerate 23% of the world’s total imprisoned people.  We have chosen to jail our mentally ill population.

In healthcare, we still do not appropriately fund wellness and prevention and, as stated above, mental illness.  In the 60’s we spent 18% of our incomes on food in this country and 9% on healthcare.  Now we spend 9% of our income on faux and genetically altered food, sugar and corn syrup enhanced food, and 18% on our healthcare.  Does anybody see the potential connection here?

Education, drugs, prison, tolerance and inclusion, the Golden Rule, and appropriate distribution of wealth that is not dependent upon the approximately 12,000 registered lobbyists working Washington D.C. could be a start.  But just like gun violence . . . someone has to have a rational discussion at the top levels of government to make any progress.  Optimism is not one of my better attributes when it comes to the government and personal greed.

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When the news broke that Beyonce might have lip-synced the National Anthem at the Inaugural Ceremony, my first thought was, “Who cares?” Seriously, we are beginning to be the most entertained and least educated advanced culture in the world now.  When people are being killed by terrorists, Congress can’t agree on anything, and Korea is threatening to launch more missiles while China and Japan are chasing each other in war planes, we worry about lip syning?

When President Kennedy was killed and I had to stand in the middle of my high-school stadium and play Taps, I wish they had invented sound-track-trumpet lip-sync. The other time that I had that wishful feeling was standing …on the rooftop of a bank in Indiana, PA, on Veterans Day also playing Taps to a few thousand people watching from below. For any of you who are familiar with music and musicians, not unlike the wind blowing in the end zone at Heinz Field, we are sometimes impacted by weather conditions.

For example, what if Beyonce had been standing in freezing rain with heavy winds? The music from the Marine Band could have floated off into the distance, and she would have been completely out-of-sync with them. Or, what if the wind blew really hard and the music had flown off the Marine Band’s music stands? (We used clothes pins to hold the music in my day.) Because that was an arrangement that was written specifically for her, they could have really screwed things up. None of those things happened, however, and it wasn’t so cold that the band’s mouthpieces froze to their lips like the kid stuck to the flagpole in A Christmas Story. In fact, it was a beautiful, sunny, winter day, and the potential for nervousness was the only possible reason for the accusation by the Marine Band that Beyonce had lip-synced.

You know, she was afraid she’d pull a Christina Aguilera and flub the words, or a Roseanne Barr and destroy the song completely. (My Taps experiences turned out okay, but I was so afraid of screwing up that I nearly pulled an Al Roker on those two occasions.) Well, some of you may think that I’m a sissy, but by the end of her rendition of the National Anthem, I had tears in my eyes. It was absolutely BEAUTIFUL, and her talent was so obviously overwhelming that, at least to me, lip-syncing would not have been a problem.

BUT then at about 6:14 p.m., I saw a post that the Marine Band was recanting their charge. Capt. Eric Flanagan, a spokesman for the United States Marine Corps reportedly said, “The band accompanying her was pre-recorded, but the Marine Band has no knowledge as to whether Beyoncé sang live.” Then he went on to say, “Regarding Ms. Knowles-Carter’s vocal performance, no one in the Marine Band is in a position to assess whether it was live or pre-recorded.” So, no one would ever be able to say definitively that she had used the lip-sync track. But here’s the REAL STORY: The Marine Band and Beyonce had not had a chance to practice together . . . EVER! Well, Holy COW, no wonder she would even consider lip-syncing! Not getting to practice together, even once, is a little like riding a bike for the first time ever, in New York City rush hour traffic.

The spokesperson who decided to out Beyonce is probably peeling potatoes or counting paper towels somewhere, and for what? It’s not like Lance Armstrong where Beyonce was taking voice enhancement drugs and lying.

Either way, her voice is amazing. So, here’s my final take on this situation: If Beyonce wants to come to the Consol Energy Center and sing, I’m there. She’s really talented and, I know this is not politically correct, but she is gorgeous, too. AND the Marine Band? What can anyone say about the Marine Band? They’ve played for every Inauguration since Thomas Jefferson became our third president. So, not unlike when I order decaffeinated latte’ with skimmed milk, I say, “WHY BOTHER?   Come on folks; let it alone.”

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Just for clarification, this is not about Borders Bookstores.  This little blog is about the borders in our lives.  The theme is not original, but it is, in fact, potentially consequential to us all.  Borders are either what we embrace or consciously decide to cross.  Usually, when that crossing process begins, we are teenagers seeking our own relevancy, independence and joie de vivre.  Borders can be relevant demarcations that we, as a society, embrace; or not. For example, when you attempt to cross over the imaginary line between Canada and the United States, you’d better have a passport, and when you go from El Paso to Juarez, you’d better have a bazooka.    Just read this warning from the Juarez Wikipedia page:   WARNING: Be extremely careful in the city because of gang violence in Ciudad Juarez. Over 5000 people, including some foreigners, have been killed since the beginning of 2009. Most murders are related to the drug trade, but the city remains unsafe for anyone caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Criminal gangs that engage in extortion and kidnapping operate with near impunity. Now that’s a potentially significant border. We have borders all around us, and those borders can be very real or completely self-imposed.  In fact, many of the borders that mankind has spilled blood for over the centuries have either long been forgotten or were senseless in the first place.

I often talk about the view from space where, unless the borders are made by flowing rivers or distinctive mountains or oceans, they are not visible from outer space.  As societies we have agreed upon borders, but beyond that agreement, we sometimes embrace them in a completely irrational manner.  Border crossings really do help us move from childhood to adulthood on so many levels.  It seems that when we can decide that our toys are too juvenile, we can finally put them down and move on with our lives.  (That is until we can afford more expensive and complicated toys.)  When we trade Buzz Lightyear for an IPad, we know that we are crossing a new threshold, a new border.  The challenge that we all seem to face, though, is when to ignore borders that may have once served a purpose but no longer make sense.  Do you really want to go back to just passing notes once you’ve kissed?

Well, this Christmas, I witnessed five little kids who were securely wrapped in the magic and wonder of the season.  Yes, there were more questions than usual, but they eagerly dove into the protection of the carefully laid out borders set by their parents since birth.  “You must be in bed or Santa won’t come.”  “You can’t get up too early because your presents might disappear. “ Unfortunately for many of us, borders which begin as cobwebs, grow into ropes and eventually morph from chains to heavy wire cable.  Many times they prove to be very unhealthy for us as humans.  For example, if you have extremely high cholesterol and drink two gallons of cream per day, you may only have a 50/50 chance of needing to be concerned about crossing other borders.

Bottom line?  Growth comes from working half of the time in areas with which you are acquainted and comfortable and the other fifty percent  in areas where you have little or no comfort; crossing those borders will make you grow.

As we launch into another new year, I encourage all of you to be more introspective; to look at what’s holding you back, keeping you from growing, and most importantly what’s feeding your soul or not?  I’m also asking you to get out of the woulda, shoulda, coulda mind set and move on with your life.  You can never create a better past for yourself.

Come on, take a leap across some old, unneeded borders and have a very Happy New Year!

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Because the events in Connecticut are still so raw in all of our minds and hearts, I’ve hesitated to undertake this topic until now.  Having taught over 2000 students during the first ten years of my professional life, I was exposed to a small percentage of individuals with behavioral health challenges.   I taught some kids who were barely able to function in society, and some who were bipolar and/or schizophrenic, including at least three who evolved into sociopaths and murderers.

As a hospital administrator, I’ve never forgotten this phone call:  “My husband has stopped taking his lithium and the last time he did that, he came after his closest friend.  That would be you.  I’m leaving him, but you need to be careful.”

I’m also familiar with this quote, “If you take five prescription medications there is a 100 percent chance they will interact with each other; we just don’t know what that interaction will be.”   So, is the pharmaceutical industry complicit in this issue as well? Quite possibly.

Back in the eighties, much of the inpatient mental health system all but vanished in this country, and today behavioral health challenges continue to carry a stigma that is not only tenuous but also very detrimental to the well being of not only those challenged individuals but for all of us.  So, yes, behavioral health issues have clearly been a part of each of these attacks. And is that an easy fix?  I think not.  I believe the stigma associated with mental illness is a huge problem, and even if we seek help, it is many times not available.

Let’s discuss the third rail.  As a kid I grew up with guns and target shooting was one of my favorite family pastimes.   I can tell you that we never had a problem due to the fact that we owned those guns.  They were locked up; they were handled appropriately, and they were used for what they were intended.

However, when you see facts like:  There have been 62 gun-related mass murder attacks across this country since 1982, or that approximately 50 million people own about 250,000,000 guns in the U.S., you have to wonder about connectivity to this issue.

The chief medical examiner has said the ammunition was the type designed to  break up inside a victim’s body and inflict the maximum amount of damage,  tearing apart bone and tissue.  So what about gun control?   Do I believe that semiautomatic weapons, armor piercing bullets, extended clips, et al., contribute to the ease of access for these mass murderers? Yes, I do.  I would love to see controls regarding the above mentioned killing devices, but I do not believe this is the only solution.  Should people be permitted to own guns?  Yes.

Is part of the problem because we have created such vicious and mind-numbing video games that glorify showing brain fragments, blood and body parts flying everywhere when the player makes a direct hit with his faux automatic weapon?  Have the countless violent television shows and movies made us numb?   Is the breakdown of the family unit a contributing factor?  In my opinion, the answer is yes to all.

We have also become a uniquely isolated civilization where neighbors don’t know or recognize neighbors.  We walk around with our heads down and our earphones tucked neatly into our ears making sure we have no eye contact.  This isolation also might be a component in this complicated stew of contributing factors. There is no easy solution.  I would hate to see our schools and colleges become modified prisons.  I would hate to see our lives become self-imposed solitary confinement chambers, but clearly excessive access to kill-type weapons, inadequate access to behavioral health treatment, lack of understanding of drug interactions, and excessive exposure to violence seem to have created the perfect storm.

During this holiday season and throughout the year, we need to hold each other and love each other more than ever before.  That’s one thing that we surely do need, lots more love, understanding and appreciation of our common humanness.

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So, when Gate Keeping, Patient Education, Discharge Planning and Safe, Timely Hand-offs are NOT ENOUGH what do you do to limit re-admissions prior to 30 days after discharge?   What are you doing to improve your patient and employee satisfaction scores?   Are you doing this through lay-offs, cut backs, hiring only independent contractors, short staffing nursing, and fighting transparency, employee empowerment, and the creation of a nurturing environment?

Medicare will engage in real clinical transparency, insisting on the publication of real-time information about infections and other important aspects of quality and safety as one of its conditions for participation.  How will you deal with these issues?

It was NOT THAT LONG AGO when capitated managed care was lashing at the shores of the medical complex in these United States, and the push back, lack of sensitivity to the real issues and a lack of desire to change created a rush to merge and a fear of change.

What is it going to take to enlighten our internal healthcare leadership so as to allow them to see the forest and the TREES?

A few months ago, I presented a picture of what adding Integrative Medicine modalities could and would do for a health system that was slated to be short changed tens of millions of dollars due to mediocre HCHAPS scores.  When the CEO saw the numbers involved in treating about 40,000 patients a year in both inpatient and outpatient settings with gentle, nurturing attention, he sat back, smiled and said,”All of the salaries of all of those employees amount to the cost of about ONE readmission.”

Did you read that?

What differentiates your facilities from every other facility?  Better equipment?  Better doctors?  Better care?  Is the public educated enough to understand the nuances between a 48 slice and a 128 slice CT?  Does the public understand what the alphabet soup of letters represents after your employees names?  Nope, no, they do not not.  What they hope is that you have good equipment and good people, but what they know is HOW THEY ARE BEING TREATED AS HUMAN BEINGS.

Believe me, if your patients still have to “leave their diginty at the door,” to survive in your healthcare facility, there’s a good chance that you will be consumed by another organization in the not too distant future.

What is Integrative Medicine?

Integrative Medicine — the practice of medicine that reaffirms the importance of the relationship between the practitioner and the patient, focuses on the use of all appropriate therapeutic approaches, healthcare professionals and disciplines to achieve optimal health and healing.

Holistic Medicine — medical care that views physical and mental and spiritual aspects of life as closely interconnected and equally important approaches to treatment of the whole person.

Why not?  It is evidence based.  It produces amazing outcomes and helps significantly cut back on re-admissions.   It treats people with dignity.  It reaches areas that traditional medicine may never reach, and it is INEXPENSIVE.  Offer it to your patients and to your employees.  Many of the top facilities IN THE WORLD are offering Integrative Holistic medicine as part of their treatment plans and so should you.

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