[By the way, this is the 3,600th post on this blog. Thank you for reading. It just keeps growing even though manufacturing and production in general seem to have been enduring a little period of stagnation.]
Many years ago, my health insurance would not pay for a routine annual physical checkup. I thought that was just about the stupidest thing imaginable. Long a student (and practitioner) of fitness, wellness, and health, I viewed prevention and early detection as essential ingredients of what is now called a healthspan.
Then two emails came my way in a span of 12 hours on this topic and more. Please read these and spread the word. Our Congresspeople appear to be pretty powerless right now. Maybe some will have the courage to take up the battle. Maybe if enough of us continue to raise the alarm, some changes will happen.
And we do need change.
The Peter Diamandis newsletter came yesterday. I appreciate what he has to say even when I sometimes find him a little over the top optimistic or disagree with him.
He begins the newsletter with a story and a point:
On January 7th at 11:30am, I looked out my home-office window to see black plumes of smoke billowing over a nearby hill. My first thought: What the hell is going on?
That was the beginning of a 5-week forced evacuation from our Santa Monica home, on the boarder of Pacific Palisades.
I’m writing this from a friend’s home, where we’ve taken refuge. We’re among the lucky ones – our house is still standing. But more than 18,000 homes have been destroyed, and 200,000 Angelenos have been displaced. The devastation is estimated between $100 billion to $200 billion, and honestly, I think that’s a low-ball estimate.
But here’s what really pisses me off: This was preventable. ALL of it.
This is happening because we’re stuck with systems and institutions that are centuries old and business models that are sub-linear and fundamentally broken.
Take the insurance industry, it’s perverse and inappropriately incentivized.
Read the entire essay with his proposed solutions.
No sooner did I finish this essay when a similar one came from Seth Godin.
Godin provides a list of problems with the healthcare system. He concludes:
And so, a system that’s organized around treatments and status, that misallocates time and effort, causing stress for practitioners and patients. Historical bias in training leaves more than half of the population underserved and unseen, and, as a result, stress is high, many people don’t get the right treatment or hesitate to get any treatment at all, and costs continue to rise.
Systems change is difficult, because persistent systems are good at sticking around. They create cultural barriers that make their practices appear normal, and there are functional barriers as well.
When a change agent (often an external technology or event) arrives, the system must respond, often leading to change. All around us, we see systems changing, and often, that change agent is the smart phone. 91% of adults in the US have a smartphone, and it’s even higher among people under 65.
He then postulates a smartphone app:
The ubiquity of the connected supercomputer in our pockets has overhauled the taxi industry, the hotel business, restaurants and most of all, pop culture. But it hasn’t transformed the healthcare system. Add AI to the mix, and it’s possible that change is about to happen.
Imagine an app.
He continues with a list of possibilities. I’m not going to reproduce them. Visit his blog page. It’s thoughtful.
His conclusion.
The biggest information shift here is the more accurate collection and correlation of symptoms and treatments. The secondary (but ultimately longer-term) shift is finding threads of common interest and comparing doctors in their responses to symptoms. (And the side effect of giving patients agency and the solace that comes from insight can’t be ignored). Because both of these data shifts will lead to better patient outcomes (usually at much lower cost, with less trauma) the healthcare professionals who signed up for precisely this outcome will also thrive.
It’s not a panacea. But shifting information flows, improving peace of mind and the quality and timing of diagnosis are problems we can work to solve.
