More Health For the Care

The body politic and the medical care industry are not without honor but they cannot achieve optimum health status or cost containment by manipulating health insurance or reforming medical care. It is a matter of priorities. Health must be emphasized above sickness. Even what is considered successful treatment of a disease does not yield the health status prior to the disease. Furthermore, illness, disease, injury and disability will always be costly. It is best to avoid them, if at all possible.

More health for the care can be achieved by placing emphasis upon primary prevention integrated into all aspects of community life. Every institution and organization is involved and responsible. A public health care system will monitor and address health status in the community. Primary care medicine that is oriented to individual and community health will be the first responders to sickness. Linking and coordinating these activities depends upon educating the public and providers alike. Everyone needs health care, medical care is for those who need it.

Transformation Of Healthcare - Business As An Example

Corporate America is getting more active in health care. Health promotion as an extension of occupational medicine has been around for a while and it is becoming more organized and focused. Facilities for physical activity, nutritional counseling, weight management and other prevention programs often are part of the package. Disease management, health coaches and primary care clinics round out the picture of "corporate health care".

The incentive for business is to save money and make employees more productive. A captive audience (to some extent) allows for greater intensity of health promotion and prevention. Business can offer employees incentives that are more easily recognized as such.

Health promotion and prevention are moving into the forefront of health care. The efforts in the corporate world bear close scrutiny for what works and can be exported to society at large.

Academia would do well to follow this trend from a research and teaching perspective. The issue of well-trained health coaches is one example. The federal government is conducting a three-year coaching pilot program to examine the concept. Insurers and self-insured employers are creating programs that employ health coaches.

These are the things that over time will change (transform) health care.

Transformation Of Healthcare - Laying The Foundation

There are some advantages to the delayed application of a technology. Such might be the case with the electronic medical record. Now that the time is approaching, it offers the opportunity to think strategically about the potential.

Converting the current medical record to an electronic format provides opportunity for improvement of patient safety and efficiency of patient care in the medical setting. The potential for improved health status is greatly increased by expanding the format to a personal health record. Including health education, health promotion and preventive health care would be a giant step to realizing (w)holistic health care and rational self-directed health care.

The extra planning and effort would be small and inexpensive at this time and it would pay huge dividends in the future. Including it later would be costly for the time wasted. Health care is a participatory, not a spectator, activity and the American public needs to get with it.

Technorati Tags: Lifestyle, Health, Prevention, Health Care