Our Health Care System is Broken - Really?

A rule of blogging: if you ever want anyone to follow along, be consistent and predictable. Oh well - I don't seem to follow rules very well. Life has been active along other areas of interest lately, like grandchildren and parents and Duluth beach life and other more family oriented activities than personal excursions or explorations. And the writing bug left me for some reason. I'm still hoping to become victim of that bug again, but in the meantime any remaining reader is left with this dribble from an amateur pundit.

A lot of social and political energy is being spent on “diversity and inclusion”. These are trigger words for social justice warriors, human resource departments, and political aspirants. An inherent assumption behind the overall concept is that our society and, specifically, the workplace is unequal in opportunity between races, or genders, or sexual orientation, or religions. It has become one of the highest priorities among executives in business and government, and one of the most lucrative fields in consulting (which is cause and which is effect is left for interpretation). Activists are mixing the issue in with other perceived inequalities inherent in what they think are oppressive values and practices of a dominant, white patriarchy. 

Recent frequent and long visits to the hospital caring for my mother make me wonder if the health care industry must be an outlier for this diversity and inclusion. The nurses caring for her were predominately of African descent. Their care, sometimes slightly hampered by a lack of fluency in the english language, was every bit as compassionate, competent, and empathetic as any nurse of a conventional background, males and females alike. Doctors, while predominately white and male, were from varying national backgrounds, and were similarly professional and vested in her improvement and well being. No evidence of a white patriarchy or environment of unequal opportunity seemed to be at work at this hospital.

In fact, our experience reinforces my perception that the current interpretation of our collective state of well-being is really different from the prevailing political narrative these days. All the hardship and suffering depicted in our news and discourse comes from a place not rooted in our statistical reality for sure, and not supported by this anecdotal experience with practices and behaviors in one of the toughest medical care facilities in the Twin Cities. 

We are so much better off than previous generations in general, it’s silly to argue otherwise. From humanprogress.org, consider:

• In 1966, average life expectancy was only 56 years. In 2016, it was 72. That’s an increase of 29 percent.
• Out of every 1,000 infants born, 113 died before their first birthday. In 2016, only 32 died. That’s a reduction of 72 percent.
• Average income per person rose from $3,698 to over $17,469, or by 372 percent – and that’s adjusted for inflation.
• The food supply rose from about 2,300 calories per person per day to over 2,800 calories, an increase of 22 percent, thus reducing hunger.
• The length of schooling that a person could typically expect to receive was 4.15 years. In 2016, it was 8.71 years – a 110 percent increase.
• On a scale from 0, which denotes autocracy, to 10, which denotes democracy, political freedom rose from 4.55 in 1966 to 7.05 in 2016. That's an improvement of 55 percent. 

From Regions Hospital, consider:

• Attention was placed as much on the family as on the patient, in terms of assuring comfort, answering questions, and responding to requests.
• At one point, I commented to a doctor on the disappointment in the contradiction in advice on what could and could not be done from one nursing manager to another. It suggested to me, I said, that future advice from nursing staff couldn’t be entirely trusted. My daughter was observing the exchange and said she saw all the hallmarks of professional customer service on the part of that doctor. In how he asked questions, empathized with my perspective, took extra effort to listen, and reflected back to me what he heard. He asked if I minded if he shared that concern, to which I of course said no. Within 24 hours, I received a call from a “Patient and Guest Support” supervisor asking for some elaboration so they could learn from the experience. A real focus on satisfaction.
• Valet parking and patient and guest support staff could be found on every floor and around every corner to help those not familiar with the hospital are further evidence of a culture of “customer” focus.

It’s not a stretch to say that a patient in todays health care system enjoys a level of compassionate competence and care not recognizable from twenty, or even ten years ago. It’s not only the effects of technology improvements that have had an unbelievable impact on medical efficacy. Care and treatment of patients and family has also made a dramatic step change, according to my experience. To call this health care system, even for the poorest and least insured, a failure is to be ignorant of the past. Or it could be an effort on the part of some to support an interest other than that of solving problems or making things better. Could this be said of many of the social initiatives feeding our cultural conflict these days?