Modern Medicine Today, Miasma Tomorrow

john snow 01Nearly 2,000 people died of cholera in London, 1848.  Those who survived boarded their apartments and fled to the countryside.  Streets were bleached and sprinkled with sulfur to combat the foul odours, miasma, that experts believed caused the infection.

Dr. Snow pioneered population mapping in outbreaks.  He moved scientific thinking to adopt the water borne theory of cholera transmission: a feat far tougher than identifying the source of infection.

People believed foul smells caused disease.  They thought noxious odours or miasma infected patients.  The miasma theory of contagion held popular opinion for most of the 19th century.  In its final hours before surrendering to the water borne theory, followers lashed out with invective and calumny.  They attacked Dr. Snow and his theory.  They even used Snow’s best example and twisted it into support for the old miasma dogma.

What holds unquestioned support in medicine today that will cause incredulous moans of disbelief by clinicians after us?

(photo credit: www.westendextra.com)

How to Fix Healthcare: Let Leaders Lead

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Everyone knows Canadian healthcare cannot continue without significant change.  No one debates the need for it.

Popular solutions include:

– Build a hybrid or blended system

– Pay doctors and nurses less; put them on salary

– Limit services provided

People Look at Two Things:

Inputs:  funding, expenses, cost cutting, efficiency, policy change, contract negotiations, etc.

Outputs:  quality, performance, results patients get from the system.

Inputs get most attention, but more sophisticated observers have started focussing on outputs.  A few inside the system talk about ways to remove waste (LEAN, Gap analysis, etc.).

No one talks about control inside the system.

Funding Should Follow Governance

People make the imminent demise of our bloated healthcare system an issue of funding or spending, but it’s neither.  Whether money comes from taxes collected by the government or ‘taxes’ collected by insurance companies, the issue is not about money.

The debate must shift from how money comes in to who’s in control of how money gets spent.

Everyone demands accountability from the system, but no one gives those in the system the freedom or authority to truly change outcomes.  There are too many self-interested outside stakeholders trying to control the system all at the same time.  They all think they know what’s best for patient care, but very few actually provide care.

Authorities make major decisions outside the system and then expect those within the system to operate after all the rules have been set; all the room to lead has been removed.

For example:  the government negotiates contracts with nurses and then tells hospitals to be accountable to quality and efficiency within a contract that has zero productivity incentive.

We can still rescue publicly funded healthcare if we look at pockets of innovation where providers are given the chance to structure creative incentives that encourage clinicians to work differently.

We need to give the professionals inside the system a chance to show what can be done to improve patient access, quality, and service.  You can’t demand accountability without giving people freedom to control and deliver what’s being asked of them.

 

Built to Fail: Canadian Healthcare + US Legal System

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mindthis.ca

 

Canadians take pride in having non-American healthcare.

US healthcare makes millions by driving activity:  patient visits, tests, and procedures.  American lawyers take money back with lawsuits.  Canadians have a very similar legal system, also based on English common law.

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If healthcare is a commodity that can be bought and sold, patients should be able to sue for bad product.

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But, if healthcare is a public offering paid for with tax dollars, patients should have rigid limits on lawsuits, or not be able to sue at all.

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Here’s why:

Threat of suit changes behaviour, but not for patient benefit. Providers change behaviour to protect providers, not patients. Physicians order tests far beyond what’s needed, just in case.

Defensive medicine is expensive.  Providers know that ordering more tests protects them in court.  More testing also fits commercial interests: sell more.  So, commercialized medicine and medio-legal activity benefit each other: more tests and more law suits!

Extra tests put patients at risk. Every test carries some inherent risk: radiation, discomfort, etc. Tests also carry the risk of false positive results that can lead to useless surgeries (with risks) and more useless tests.

Publicly funded healthcare was designed for necessities, not to generate more business. It never existed to create work for itself. Doing more in a system designed to cover only the necessities eventually leaves too little to cover the basics.

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We need legislated legal reform.  Our publicly funded system will go bankrupt if it exists with our current, American-style legal system.

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Benefits of reform:

  1. Improved quality of care.  While you’d think that keeping all healthcare providers in perpetual fear of punishment and lawsuits would improve care, it doesn’t.  Instead, it creates a culture of covering up, or denying errors at all costs.  Medicine, like life, is full of errors.  Errors present an opportunity to improve quality, not something to hide or run-away from.  Quality improves very slowly in a system that crushes speaking up.
  2. Patient experience. Patients do not want to go through useless tests. Most want what’s necessary medically, not what’s necessary to protect providers in court.
  3. Efficiency.  If providers didn’t have to practice defensive medicine, we would see a drastic change in ordering behaviour. Huge numbers of imaging tests and lab investigations would be dropped in favour of clinical judgement.
  4. Capacity. If providers only performed tasks that directly added value for patients, we could care for more patients; wait lists would disappear.

What do you think?  Does it make sense to have a US-style legal approach to a publicly funded healthcare system?