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NickJacobs.org???

April 2nd, 2009

Let me open this blog with a little housekeeping chore. Because I’ve retired from being a hospital president (Yes, they replaced me with two great people, count ‘em, two.) , I’d like to change the name of this thing. It’s not that I’ve established a P-Diddy-type Twitter following where 100,000 human beings are waiting with baited breath to see what my next move will be, it just doesn’t seem right to keep calling myself a hospital president. We know who reads this thing, and we are grateful to our loyal, talented, and brilliant followers. We also know that we can link the old blog names to get you here. So, regardless of what you typed, or what gets Googled, our genius social media maven & webmaster, Michael Russell, can help to bring you home to this site.

Okay, so as a transformational advisor, a broker of sorts, most people with whom we have consulted have described me as a person who can fix things that are broken before they actually break. Maybe we should call it the “Break it if it’s not already fixed” blog. I’d love it if it was a name that would generate millions of hits and companies would fight to advertise on it.

My first thought was to use nickjacobs in the title because there is a Nick Jacobs on Facebook who teaches Aboriginal people in Australia, and he seems popular. There is another Nick Jacobs who is a professional organist, and one who is an athlete. There’s a Nick Jacobs who is a consultant and another a paramedic in London, one who had a blog who is a yachtsman, there’s my son, the commercial real estate broker, and finally, there’s a Nick Jacobs who does pornographic movies who is not my son. Actually, that Nick Jacobs’ followers would probably be the most disappointed by this blog.

Since the .com version of nick jacobs was already taken by some guy in England, we captured nickjacobs.org, and that will work for right now.

If you have any ideas, however, that you think would really rock the blogspere, let us know and we’ll check with our domain registrar to see if it is available. In fact, if you are the winner of a Name Nick’s Blog Contest, I’d be happy to consult for free BY PHONE for at least one hour of brainstorming with you about the topic of your choice: music, healthcare, proteomics, teaching, PR/Marketing, the travel business, or even physician recruitment.

Remember, Hospital Impact is already taken, and, because my last three consulting jobs have been with a newspaper, a nonprofit arts oragnization, and a chain of hotels, we don’t want to think too restrictively. Gotta earn a little money, too.

When we ran the breast center, we found that the website got more hits than anyone could imagine. The problem was that the readers were mostly thirteen-year-old boys who probably weren’t too interested in running a hospital. After Miss America had visited us, the hits went up exponentially when those two searches were combined. Somehow, I don’t think that Nick Jacobs’ Breast Center for Miss America would probably get me the type of following I’m currently hoping to attract. On the other hand?

A very good friend recently asked me to write a brief bio about what my new life is like, and it struck me that it is very much like my old life but without any restrictions. This is what I wrote:

While teaching junior high school instrumental music in the early 1970’s, Nick Jacobs made an extraordinary discovery. He learned that, by empowering his students and surrounding them with positive influences, he no longer was providing a service or even an experience for them.

What this entirely unique teaching style resulted in was a method for helping to transform students. By providing with both passion and commitment the tools needed by them to undertake their journey, his involvement with the students became a means of dramatically helping them to make whatever positive life changes they were seeking.

It was during that early period in his career that he also discovered that this formula could work to positively change lives in almost any aspect of living as he ran an arts organization, a convention bureau, and finally a hospital and research institute.

Since that time he has dedicated his personal work to helping others make their lives better, and that is exactly what he is doing in his position as an international executive consultant with SunStone Consulting, LLC.

Maybe that will give you something to chew on? Okay, something on which to chew.

SunStone Consulting. With more than 20 years experience in executive hospital leadership, Nick has an acknowledged reputation for innovation and patient-centered care approaches to health and healing.

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Posted in Boomers, Breast Care, Communication, Current Affairs, Development, Healthcare, Healthcare Marketing, Hospital, Hospital Administration, Hospital Blog, Hospitals, Integrative Health, Leadership, marketing, Medicare, Medicine, Music, Music Education, Nutrition, patient-centered care, Public Relations, Uncategorized, Wellness

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The Not-So-Merry-Go-Round

March 7th, 2009

Dr. Wayne Jonas, President and CEO of the Samueli Institute, a friend and mentor, testified before the U.S. Senate on February 23, 2009 regarding his views for creating a path to health care reform. Dr. Jonas, a well respected member of the Washington D.C. health community formerly served as the Director of the Medical Research Fellowship at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), a Director of a World Health Organization Collaborating Center of Traditional Medicine and a member of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy.

Wayne B. Jonas, M.D.

Wayne B. Jonas, M.D.

It is not my intent to copy this testimony, but only to accentuate some of the salient points contained within his work. Let’s begin by looking at some chilling facts. By 2082, healthcare expenditures will represent 49% of our Gross National Product. This is due to the fact that in 2011, the baby boomers will begin to turn 65 when, in the words of Dr. Jonas, “an avalanche of aging care needs…will bury the current Medicare system.”

Obviously, this is a case where more of the same is not necessarily better and, unless or until the system changes, and we fashion a new vision to create health, we will bankrupt our country. Dr. Jonas then went into the facts and figures that those of us in health care who believe in wellness, integrative medicine, and a holistic approach to healing have known for years. Seventy percent of chronic illness is due primarily to lifestyle and environmental issues, including proper substance use (smoking, alcohol, drugs, diet, and environmental chemicals), adequate exercise and sleep, stress and resilience management, social integration and support, and selective disease screening and immunization.

We are on a not-so-merry-go-round, which has an entire system of illness incentives that are improperly reimbursed, improperly addressed, and inappropriately segmented as if each part of our body was not a component of the whole. It is time to begin to throw the switch and to teach our patients what we already know so that wellness, wholeness, and health can be given a new definition.

Dr. Jonas specializes in Systems Wellness. Dr. Leroy Hood specializes in Systems Biology. We as a country need to demand that our medical schools embrace both concepts as, like indigenous man, we begin to realize that our brains do have something to do with our bodies, as we realize that our commodity driven society does not always promote the BEST food, the BEST exercise, the BEST of anything but, instead, because of the quarterly reports to the stock holders, promotes the most lucrative.

We know that drinking a soft drink with 10 teaspoons of sugar is not exactly healthful. We clearly understand that quadruple cheese anything might eventually catch up with us, or that Uncle Buck’s 72 oz. steak can’t really be good for your arteries. Fried and buttered everything, a total lack of exercise, and more stress than anyone can ever dream of will not extend our lives. There is a reason why most of our physicians die ten years before their patients. Between the battles to get their degrees, the incredibly long hours, the pressure of dealing in life and death issues, and the demands of dealing with a broken healthcare system, they need stress management as much as anyone.

How much further down must we go as a country before we begin to realize that millions of dollars, dozens of expensive toys, mansions, and rich food are not true measurements of success? During a visit to the Netherlands a few years ago, I told my host that I would be back in August. She looked at me, smiled, and said, “Don’t bother. The entire country will be on vacation,” and they were. Many European countries take 52 paid days off per year. Sure, their cars are smaller or they use bikes and generally they may own less clothing, but they are living longer, healthier lives.

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Posted in Boomers, Healthcare, Hospitals, Integrative Health

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The Marketing Enigma

February 15th, 2009

As the economy continues to present its myriad of challenges nationwide, hospital executives are embracing a variety of cost-cutting measures at a very high rate of implementation. Delays or discontinuation of capital projects, employee layoffs, and a variety of other broad-based measures are currently dominating the healthcare environment.

Departments without direct patient contact are usually perceived to be the easier layers to peel in these expense reduction activities. Areas such as marketing, community, and public relations often become prime targets as they are significantly scaled back or even disbanded.

Historically, hospitals have implemented fluctuating sequences from one extreme to another as they have decreased and increased marketing department sizes and budgets through the various economic cycles. Unmistakably, in challenging economic times, marketing is nearly always more important than ever. Without knowledge concerning the various services available, the patients will not be aware of the nuances of each and how they could impact their health and wellness.

Having said this, however, many hospital executives are not experts in this area, and consequently, they simply move in lockstep with those individuals who see these programs as non-patient expense centers that merely drain the organization of its valuable resources even further.

BusinessDictionary.com aptly describes marketing as the management process through which goods and services move from concept to customer. As a philosophy, it is based on thinking about the business in terms of the customer, or in healthcare, patient needs and their satisfaction. As a practice, it consists of the coordination of four elements:

  • identification, selection, and development of a product
  • determination of its cost
  • selection of a distribution channel to reach the patient, and…
  • development and implementation of a promotional strategy designed to reach these goals

In order to avoid erroneous decisions that could lead to disastrous business consequences for the organization, marketing evaluations might be performed by professional marketing assessment companies specializing in this arena. Some of these firms can provide this service in economically viable risk-reward agreements that do not further complicate the financial challenges being addressed. They specialize in the evaluation of services that detail which marketing functions need to be continued and which functions should be restructured, and/or outsourced. The goal of these marketing evaluation firms is to:

  • help preserve the existing positive effects created by marketing
  • build better marketing practices, and…
  • cut the unnecessary associated costs

In two decades of observing the yo-yo phenomena described above, we have worked with numerous individuals and firms along the way, but none have been more valuable than the firms that specialize specifically in this area of marketing department analysis.

Firms that provide this specific service can be found through the American Association of Healthcare Consultants, The American Marketing Association, and the Society for Professional Marketing Services.

In our work, however, we have found at least one company that has continuously provided the necessary analytic and evaluation components required to complete this sensitive task. Corathers Health Consulting is a unique organization because it utilizes luminaries and unique specialty consultants through a team approach for most of their highly customized projects. What we observed when we worked with Corathers was that their distinguished consultation supplied an unparalleled differentiating factor over the other consulting companies with whom we had previously worked, but they are one of many such firms.

Regardless of the organization chosen, the concept is the key, and that is that you owe it to yourself and to your organization to understand exactly what can or should be eliminated or outsourced before the cuts are irreversibly implemented. The future of your organization may lie directly under that hatchet, and once the decision has been made, reverse is a costly gear to find on a very bumpy road of lost business, missing publicity, and absent advertising. The answer lies in cutting wisely and appropriately as you attempt to keep patients informed and to grow your business.

Linking a patient-Centered Approach to Quality Improvement & HCAPS

Nick Jacobs, FACHE addresses the 2008 Healthcare CEO Summit, co-sponsored by the Picker Institute and Planetree. Chicago, IL USA – Fall, 2008

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Posted in Healthcare, Healthcare Marketing, Hospital Administration, Hospitals

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Something’s Gotta Give, Something’s Gotta Give, Something’s Gotta Give!

November 1st, 2008

My Facebook friend, Anne Zieger, editor of Fierce Health Finance, wrote a compelling piece the other day regarding the potential demise of hundreds of hospitals. Her prediction is based upon some very valid financial realities, and we are witnessing them locally as well as nationally. Not unlike the little banks in our area that seemed to have been insulated from Wall Street’s collapse, some of these national problems seem to be washing over some of the smaller hospitals with relatively minimal damage. Yes, many of us have seen as much as a 10% decrease in elective, outpatient procedures.

In fact, while visiting a really upscale mall for a photo session with my two year old granddaughter, Lucy, an employee engaged me in a conversation about the rotten economy. About five minutes into the conversation, she indicated that there are currently 150 stores in the chain for which she works, and that only five percent of them made budget last month. Portrait pictures must fall into the category of a luxury as their business is severely impacted by this economy. More directly, however, she indicated that she needed stitches removed the other day, and that, “she did it herself” rather than spend the $20 co-pay.

So, are we seeing decreases in important tests? Are we seeing patients avoiding emergency room visits? Are we seeing patients cutting their prescriptions in half? Yes, to all of these questions. Anne, however, seemed to be talking about the “big boys,” where their millions or billions in investments have recently tanked. If you are so big that your income from running the hospital is not a major source of protection, and your income from your investments is propping you up, then the problems begin to manifest themselves exponentially.

“Some hospitals are responding by digging into their investment income more deeply than usual, using it to finance capital projects, or even meet operational needs. Others are issuing bonds with the scary codicil that they’ll buy them back if finicky investors want to dump them,” states Zieger in her column.

She further goes on to explain that “both of these situations put a huge squeeze on hospitals’ long-term viability. One robs from their long-term assets to solve medium-term problems, while the other puts the hospitals at risk of being bled dry by investors who get spooked.”

Well, wouldn’t ya know? Yes, we are seeing a few challenges due to decreased electives, but not because we were living off of our investments. The other good news is that, because we froze our fixed pensions several years ago, we are seeing very little impact upon them from the huge drop in those investments as well. Unlike many of our larger peers, neither of these issues is similar. Between the drops in the market, the loss of pension funds, the decrease in electives, and the down-grading of their viability by the bond markets, their challenges look galactic in size compared to ours.

Sometimes smaller is just safer.

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Posted in Healthcare, Hospital, Hospital Administration, Hospital Blog, Hospitals, Integrative Health, Leadership

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A Note From Nick Jacobs

October 24th, 2008

A Note from Nick Jacobs

On October 23, it was my honor and privilege to speak at the PATIENT-CENTERED CARE CEO CONFERENCE in Chicago with some very impressive CEO’s and Leaders. My topic was “Linking a Patient-Centered Approach to Quality Improvement and HCAHPS,” but my deeper theme was “Leadership with a Heart – Developing Love and Respect in the Workplace by Nurturing Staff, Physicians, and Patients.” For those of you who were able to attend, thank you for your kind words of encouragement and support.

As was explained during my introduction, I have made the very difficult decision to leave Windber Medical Center, but I leave with a commitment to spread the word both nationally and internationally about the journey to Patient Centered Care and how to achieve it.

Obviously, it is a risky time to attempt to begin this endeavor, but, because no time is ever completely safe, it was my decision to reach out to my peers and friends to offer my commitment to work with you with that same passion to help you achieve your goals regarding this effort.

Because Sunstone Consulting is an organization that has specialized in finding additional financial support for hospitals, we can bring you not only the formula for Patient Centered Care, but also the needed additional financial support to achieve your goals in this area.

Although I will not officially complete my assignment at WMC until December 31st of this year, my current schedule permits me two days per week to begin to develop new relationships with my friends and peers. Should you have interest in contacting us for a visit to Windber, or if you would just like to make inquiry regarding engaging us for work at your facility, please feel free to either respond to this letter by E-mail or to call me at the following contact address below.

Once again, thank you for the privilege of working with you on such a significant topic.

Warmest Regards,

Nick Jacobs

Nick Jacobs FACHE - Author of Taking the Hell Out of Healthcare

Nick Jacobs

F. Nicholas Jacobs, FACHE
International Director
SunStone Consulting, LLC
1411 Grandview Avenue Apt. 803
Pittsburgh, PA 15211
nickjacobs@sunstoneconsulting.com
jacobsfn@aol.com
Mobile: 412-992-6197
Fax: 866-381-0219

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Posted in Healthcare, Hospitals, Leadership, Partnerships

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As Close to Home As You Can Get

October 15th, 2008

Yesterday afternoon the realities of humanism, mortality, and fear attempted to take me out for about the one millionth time in my life. A phone call came from a loved one casually explaining that the doctor had potentially discovered a problem that needed further examination. When the office called for an appointment to have the scan done, they were told that it would be approximately a week before there was an opening in the schedule.

As an insider, I knew that a certain number of slots were held each day for emergency or unscheduled procedures. Not unlike the hotel that holds back a room or two from the 1-800 reservation list, just in case a preferred guest or luminary comes through the doors, flexibility is something that hospitals have to embrace at some level.

Taking the Hell out of Healthcare by Nick JacobsOnce again, as an insider, a call to the department resulted in an immediate invitation to come in for the test the very next day.

My route to health care management was a particularly unique and circuitous route, and it left me asking the question, “why does it have to be this way?” I’ve personally done everything that I can to make it humane, patient centered, and sensitive.

If you or your loved one wants to know the inside story on how hospitals work, take a look at my new book, “Taking the Hell out of Healthcare.” It really can help. It is a simple “how to” book aimed at the everyday person who is having to deal with this complex and sometimes difficult world of health care.

My passion and personal commitment has always been to patient advocacy, transparency, and human kindness. Find out how to make the system work for you.

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Posted in Hospital, Hospital Administration, Hospitals, Medicine

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In Their Own Words: Patients, staff and physicians on their experiences at Nick’s Planetree hospital

October 5th, 2008

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: hospital medical)
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Posted in Healthcare, Hospital, Hospital Administration, Hospitals, Integrative Health, Leadership, Medicine, Music, Wellness

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Quality of Care

July 31st, 2008
Back in the 70′s, competitive marching bands came into vogue in Western Pennsylvania. Let me explain the before and after of this phenomenon: Before there were competitions, bands were made up of nearly 10 times more students than they typically have today. My bands ranged in size from 120 to 185 students. Once competition came into play, the borderline students were not able to survive. Consequently, it is not unusual now to have 20 students or less in a band.

Steelcity_border

What’s happening in medicine and in health care overall? The Government is taking a three-pronged approach to improve quality in health care:

1. They are pushing quality through public reporting. (Check a website near you.)

2. Enforcing quality through the False Claims Act. (Check a prison near you.)

3. Incentivizing quality through payment reform. (Check a checkbook near you.)

Senator Chuck Grassley is quoted as saying, “Today, Medicare rewards poor quality care. That is just plain wrong, and we need to address this problem.”

HMO’s are currently embracing “pay for performance” plans for physicians and hospitals. Medicare is introducing value-based purchase plans. Medicare is proposing the linking of quality outcomes to physician payments.

As I have written before, hospitals will no longer be paid for hospital acquired conditions. That seems like a rather simple fix, but to appropriately determine if the condition was not acquired at the hospital, extensive testing must be added pre-admission at considerable costs to the hospitals.

James G. Sheehan, Medicaid Inspector General of New York said, “We are reviewing assorted sources of quality information on your facility to see what it says and if it is consistent. You should be doing the same.”

Except for the financial implications, not unlike my competitive band story, the goal was to work toward perfection. The public reporting of quality of care is intended to:

1. Correct inappropriate behavior

2. Identify overpayment’s

3. Deny payments

KirkOgrosky
The False Claims Act, on the other hand has different goals. When asked how he viewed the False Claims Act, Kirk Ogrosky, U.S. Deputy Chief for Health Care Fraud said, “You will see more and more physicians going to jail.” I guess the prisoners will be receiving better care.

Where’s it all going? Competitive band. Will it improve health care delivery? Probably, for the patients who can find the few docs and hospital that will be left? I recently had a conversation with a young computer specialist who took care of physician practices. He said, “Doctors and hospitals haven’t figured it out yet, but they are simply becoming data entry centers for ‘Big Brother’ as the facts and figures are accumulated to be used against them any way the payers decide to move forward.”

Looking back at the school year that included gym class twice a week for the entire year, rich courses in music and art, and remembering a time when priorities included those classes intended to make every student well rounded, we have to ask, “Is education today better?”

Maybe this is all too complicated to get our arms around, but if there are 78 million Baby Boomers, and the Medicare Trust Fund is heading toward bankruptcy, then we probably will see every rule in the book being applied to keep from paying out money, because there is simply not enough money to go around.

Will health care improve? Once we understand that technology is not the end all and cure all that creates healing; once we endorse prevention, wellness, optimal healing environments, and systems approaches to health and wellness, health care will improve. I’ll bet you that it will have very little to do with the rules that are unfolding right now and much more to do with the creation and acceptance of a National Health Policy.

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Posted in Boomers, Healthcare, Hospital, Hospital Administration, Hospital Blog, Hospitals, Integrative Health, Medicaid, medical errors, Medicare, Music, Wellness

A Time to Reflect On Life

June 15th, 2008

With the passing of Tim Russert, we are all made critically aware of the fragile nature of life and our need to embrace every moment as a gift.  Obviously, within a split second, every aspect of our lives can change, and, as in Mr. Russert’s case, can end.  This is not a blog about instant death, and it is not just about recognizing our mortality.  It is about preparing for our passing carefully.

Russert
Liz Szabo, a writer with USA Today described in a recent article the cancer patient experience by saying, “Patients with advanced cancer often don’t know how long they have to live or how chemotherapy will affect their lives.”  According to a study by the Journal of the American Medical Association, many physicians either don’t give patients that type of information or the patients only “hear what they choose to hear, or very often misunderstand what is said to them.”

This situation often leads to patients requesting incredibly disruptive and sometimes painful therapies that have no hope of succeeding.  According to the study, more than 20% of Medicare patients who have advanced cancer begin a new chemo regimen two weeks before they die.  Many times patients are admitted to hospice days or hours before they die.

What has been observed in cases like this was that the patient often misses the opportunity to repair relationships, get their spiritual house in order or even prepare the necessary documents such as advanced directives.

Where is this going?  Sarah Harrington, an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine in Richmond, co-author of the quoted article, indicated that “in the last few weeks or months of life, a lot of good work can be done.”

One of the points brought up in the article was that only about 37% of physicians told patients how long they had to live. This fact was not surprising to us because we have seen dozens of patients who were admitted to hospice over the years return home and live several more months or years. This particular prediction is not always dependable. The other fact quoted in the article, however, was that many patients learned more about their cases from other patients than from their physicians.

The article concluded with the suggestion that “patients and their families may have to take the initiative in finding answers to important questions.”  Thomas Smith, co-author and Chairman of Hematology and Oncology at VCU’s Massey Cancer Center suggested that the following questions should be asked by any patient in this situation:   What are my options?  Can I be cured?  Will I live longer with Chemo?  Should I consider Hospice or Palliative Care?  Who could help me cope?  What do I want to pass on to my family to tell them about my life?

Eldercare_visit
Palliative care is not limited to cancer.  All end-of-of life diagnoses qualify patients for hospice and palliative care.  Tim didn’t need or have this opportunity, but for those who do, embrace it. The primary thing that can be delivered to the patient and their family is the comfort of having caregivers dedicated to helping you move through your transition.  It is what they do.  These amazing people, volunteers, employees and physicians are dedicated to “paying it forward.”

So, as we eventually face our own mortality, as we evaluate what it is that we want to share with our families, as we consider the legacy that we wish to leave, having a clear mind and looking to those professionals who can help us is not only necessary, it is imperative. This transition can come in the blink of an eye.

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Posted in Boomers, Healthcare, Hospital, Hospital Administration, Hospital Blog, Hospitals, Medicare

$4.3 Trillion in U.S. Health Care Spending?

May 9th, 2008

“Money doesn’t make you happy.  I now have $50 million, but I was just as happy when I had $48 million.”
–Arnold Schwarzenegger

According to an article in Internal Medicine News by Mary Ellen Schneider, spending on health care in these United States is projected to reach 20% of the gross domestic product on the one hundredth anniversary of my father’s birth, 2017.  Of course that projection is only an estimate made by CMS, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  That estimate is, of course, based upon a continued escalation of nearly 7% each year for the next nine years.  In lay terms, that escalation would mean that the total dollars spent on health care would hit $4.3 trillion…Whatever a trillion is? I still can’t fathom a billion of anything.)

Burdenicon2
We all should realize by now that this spending in the public sector, Medicare and Medicaid, will increase due to the first wave of Baby Boomers entering the Medicare system in 2011.  My 78 million peers, like the lemmings, are working their way toward the proverbial wall, and for those of you who will have to carry the load until we are wearing our wings, that is not a pretty financial picture.

The same economists from CMS are predicting a decrease in reimbursements to physicians over the next several years while Home Health will likely grow faster than most other sectors except perhaps prescription drugs.

What does it all mean?  We are spending more on health care in the United States than any industrialized country in the world and, truthfully, our overall age of death is significantly surpassed by many of those “spending less” countries.  How can that be?  Well, for one thing, we have 47 million uninsured citizens in this country and no one really knows how many illegal aliens. Why so many uninsured?  They don’t vote.  The vast majority are young, single mothers with small children, and this does not take into consideration the illegal aliens who are also not insured.

Back to the answer. . . prenatal care is inadequate and infant mortality in the United States is still an embarrassment. A few of the countries that do better than us in the world in infant deaths per thousand are:  Australia, Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden Switzerland and the United Kingdom.  Hmmmmmm?  Could it be because we spend 30% of our annual health care dollars on the last thirty days of life, and less than 4% of our monies on preventative and wellness care?

Of course, Hospice would be a tremendous help.  We could reduce expenditures on end of life care, properly care for our babies with the excess funds, and ensure that our uninsured are properly covered as well, but what politician is willing to touch that electric third rail of the electorial subway tracks?

We could begin by putting in a network of sidewalks, bike trails, and walking trails.  We could actually walk once in a while and treat our bodies like a true temple, not the “Temple of Doom.”

HospiceOne of the least often heard issues revolving around these expenditures is the continuation of our archaic hospital system.  It is based on the acute care model, and the vast majority of our diseases are chronic.  We rush the victim to the hospital, patch them up, send them home and then rush them back again without any commitment to behavioral modification.  I have seen individuals reverse their heart disease from diet, exercise, and stress management.  Why can’t we embrace this concept, reward these activities, and change our society?  The millions of bicycles in Europe are no accident.

So, as I’ve quoted in some other blogs, “Change or Die,” or just spend ourselves into oblivion as we attempt to prop up a system that should have gone out with the Industrial Revolution.  Good luck kids, your ole man needs you to keep working to cover my health insurance.

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Posted in Books, Boomers, Healthcare, Hospital, Hospitals