There are 11 sections to this video (see below). I offer them to you as a table of contents to remind you of sections you viewed. After you watch the video, please post your reflections on the video and its implication for healthcare in the U.S., both uplifting and hopeful, as well as the more disturbing aspects. Initially, I'd rather not ask specific questions, but may comment on your posts to probe further.
What do you think about where we can look for optimistic outcomes, and where is the problem more entrenched and harder to dig our way out?
Post your thoughts on your blog, as a new post here, or as comment to this post. Remember commenting on others is important, too.
Video Sections:
- Escape Fire
- Primary Care
- Good People Bad System
- A National Dependency
- The Dark Matter of Medicine
- The American Way
- An Entrenched System
- Throwing a Different Pitch
- Change Your Lifestyle
- Seeking Escape Fires
- One Company
Where to pin the tail on the donkey? There are multiple things to blame. There is a society who's members have lost control over their diet and lifestyle choices, there are the lobbyists working for drug companies keeping that pill machine turning, there is a broken healthcare system. Where does one start?? How about changing the fundamentals of where it all begins: our diet and how we live our lives. I'd like to suggest a really interesting movie/documentary done, it's called Food, Inc. I was able to attend a seminar hosted by Eric Schlosser, one of the narrators. This is about the food industry and how far it's come over the last 50 years. From genetically modified food to heavily medicated animals. Many of these methods have been employed to serve bigger and longer lasting foods which have been attributed to our obese society. We as a society have also been ignoring the important messages that we need to fix our diet. Our next problem would be pharmaceutical companies and the substantial kickbacks given to doctors and pharmacists for using their drug. It has gotten so far out of control that there should be a complete cleanup of the system. I'm really glad that there ARE some doctors out there that are starting a new type of healthcare system. It makes sense and it appears to be the only way in dealing with such an entrenched broken system.
ReplyDeleteFood, Inc. Where was Eric's seminar? I saw link on Frontline. How fortunate that you were able to go. I recently read a book, or an article about our obesity epidemic and how what we eat is primarily to blame. We are now seeing obesity trends in such places as Africa because of their change in diet to Western-type foods. I'm noting the topics you mentioned. I'll add this link, but a good resource is the NYTimes Health link. Frontline is another good source, and the newest show (this week) is on Supplements and Safety - quite timely! http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/
DeleteAbout changing fundaments, it has rightly been stated - "Prevention is better than cure", which I think is the crux of the healthcare system flaw (of cure driven).
DeleteAfter watching this video, the biggest eye opener for me was seeing just how dependent our society is on pills and other pharmaceuticals. Everybody wants to look for the easy way out, or the path of least resistance, and when they get bombarded day after day by hundreds of ads for these miracle pills, it's all they can think about when they need treatment. After watching television for awhile, we start to not even realize just how prominent these pill ads have become. They've become the norm, and in my opinion, that's really not okay. It really confuses me just how desensitized we have become in regards to seeing these pill ads all the time. Sometimes, the announcer listing off all the possible horrible side effects of taking the drugs takes up half of the commercial's running time. And yet, these companies keep making millions when someone's health can be improved so much by simple diet and exercise changes. What really gave me hope in the video was something I wasn't even aware of or even expecting, but seeing Safeway's attempts at getting their employees healthy and active was very inspiring. I can only hope that more companies in the future use it as an example and an inspiration.
ReplyDeleteWe will address this in class, but feel free to explore this in more detail. I have LOTS of resources. Other companies are starting to create incentives for health employees. It's a win-win.
DeleteTo be clear, we will address our country's addiction to pills and pain killers and the doctors who prescribe them.
DeleteThis documentary is very revealing but in doing so it is also very frightening. It tries to expose the actual state of our healthcare system and it shines a light on how damaged the system has become. Maybe the root of the problem is American Culture which then extends itself all the way to the fault of the pharmaceutical companies. American society is so accustomed to fast and efficient services that this method of doing business is seen in healthcare. But many don’t realize that is method of healthcare is highly inefficient and unreliable and it simply does not work. And this is the reason why we spend an extraordinary amount of money on healthcare. Patients and physicians start to believe that pills are the only way to treat disease. Patients receive too much unnecessary care. Pharmaceutical and insurance companies feed this frenzy disregarding healthier and safer alternatives for the sake of profit. Instead of rewarding physicians for high-quality and responsible healthcare practices or keeping their patients healthy they are rewarded for doing more unnecessary patient operations, for prescribing more medication. For some physicians it’s about quantity instead of quality. This documentary I believe was filmed in order for the view to get engaged in the subject, to encourage change in the community.
ReplyDeleteActually, we changed our metric from fee-for-service to quality metrics. Bet you didn't know that. Wonder if doctors do. Insurance and health plans are required to measure it -- assuming their information systems are capable of doing that. More on this, too.
DeleteThis video proves that American’s have gotten lazy and slow, (slow in the sense of taking the initiative to change the current issues in the medical field). Everyone is to blame for this; the patients for not exercising or eating healthy, despite the new education in our school systems about over eating and eating fast-food. As the video indicated, the patients sitting on the couch non-stop and have back issues and they want relief to their pain as fast as possible with little amount of effort, because there is more money involved for pills. However, doctors (according to the video) have new procedures to see as many patients as possible due to new government and insurance limitations, which causes less time with patents and leads into misdiagnosis cause the patient (or insurance) to pay more. What confuses me is the stats of how much we pay per person in our country, which is around $ 8,000.00, yet we have one of the shortest health lifespans in the world. Overall, the video indicates people are numbers and doctors do operations to get paid, not talking to people. All of this is just nuts and creating more problems for our future generations.
ReplyDeleteI agree with most of what you are saying. How ever I do not think that it is every ones fault. I believe that it is more of the drug companies pushing for there product to be taken and there goals are not to treat the problem but to treat the symptoms. This leads the patient asking the doctor and then the doctor proscribing the medicine. Basically the system is there to make money not to help people get better.
DeleteYou're right, it is a money game, but if we can educate people the danger of fast food, why can't we educate the danger of drug companies and have people excise and eat health? I think its 2/3 of the everyone's fault.
DeleteThis documentary was vary insightful to me. I am in the Army Reserves and I am well aware of the abuse of drugs like pain medicine and anti-depressants with in the military. I however (until I watched this) had never heard of any alternatives like the acupuncture or meditation as opposed to taking piles to treat things like PTSD and chronic pain. The Documentary states that over medicating in the military is linked to suicide and that in 2010 there were more solders that died outside of combat than in. This is alarming and shows there is something that needs to change with in the military. The documentary also states that the military is just a symptom of our whole society in that we want a pill to fix everything. We are so geared to think that we need a pill to fix our pain that we immediately reject any alternative methods that won’t give us immediate relief. Instead of trying to fix the problem we just cover the symptoms. I believe that we need a change in our society in how we look at our pain problems and how we solve them in other way that do not require a pill to mask the overall problem.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe problem I see, (I have read similar thoughts from other students) is a vicious circle totally under the control of the insurance companies. The cycle starts from the root cause being -> expensive healthier options in terms of lifestyle; food being the main thing. As I have personally observed in many of the grocery stores, healthier food options are much more expensive than unhealthy ones which many cannot afford. For example: a bag of baked Lays chips is more expensive than the fried ones when actually it takes Lays lesser amount of money to prepare the baked ones -> With more unhealthy food being consumed, the probability of contracting an illness is high -> This results in frequent hospital visits which is repeated redundantly due to the healthcare system -> This promoted patients to either go for a health insurance premium or suffer in overwhelming hospital bills -> Patients with fixed minimal wages fall back to their unhealthy lifestyle after getting temporary medication (which again is controlled by pharmaceutical companies) as the cost of healthy alternatives surge.
ReplyDeleteI feel this price surge for healthy products is controlled by the insurance companies and in turn the government for not subsidising such products. I clearly see this cycle in the documentary which was evident in many key sections.
Another way I visualised the problem is like a pyramid model; where the insurance companies and senates sit at the top of the pyramid while the common man is right at the bottom and hospitals, food manufacturers, pharmaceuticals etc occupying the middle.
I have a few other points that I would like to mention with this documentary:
ReplyDeleteOne: As I noticed in the documentary, even though there was a chronically ill patient who has just cut her hand and the primary care doctor calls a specialist, the immediate answer was that "the specialist was out for lunch". I think in such situations accessibility to doctors are critical and can be easily improved in the age of technology.
2. A hope is seen in the usually shunned eastern medicine and relief has been observed in several patients in the documentary. Though a caveat being that FDA would probably approve a diabetes drug without accurate research tests rather than unconventional methods of medicine. The main driving factor for unconventional medicine being patient satisfaction/well-being with as minimal side-effects.
3. To state mathematically: Operations/hospital visits are proportional to cost/money (burden for the patient) but inversely proportional to wellness. Healthcare funding is proportional to number of patients/cases but inversely to effective treatment of diseases.
This video provided several interesting topics about our healthcare industry as it stands, and some suggestions on what needs to change. What I found to be most fascinating (and terrifying) is just how deep the problems run. While clearly there are multiple viable ideas regarding what should change about the industry, I firmly believe that a patient's health knowledge as well as interactions with healthcare professionals is one of the main factors behind our "broken" system. One of the few bright spots of this documentary is when the cameras were following the female doctor in rural Oregon. I know that I personally hate visiting the doctor due to the fact that I rarely feel that I am receiving the time required to get to the root of what may be causing illness of discomfort. While I have not had a doctor nearly as caring as the one highlighted in this documentary, I think that realizing that there are healthcare professionals out there who DO care is essential to changing the population's mindset on how they feel about going to see the doctor. Once people feel like they are valued more highly as a patient and trust their doctor, it's fair to assume that they will become more likely to visit and have their health regularly maintained. This can greatly help the needed shift from a "sickness" industry to a true HEALTHcare focused industry that is so clearly needed and desired. It was also mentioned in the documentary that there is a real need for the upcoming generation of healthcare professionals to understand the importance of spending quality time with a patient to shift from treating symptoms toward working on a higher level of health to begin with. Ironically, as can be seen with Banner's takeover of UMC, even Research One institutions such as the University of Arizona are dictated by money more than education at times, as Banner's focus is largely profit-based rather than the educational model that was in place. Overall, this was a fantastic documentary with many well-presented topics regarding the much-needed changes for our healthcare industry and I look forward to exploring these issues in greater detail.
ReplyDeleteAs Kelly points out, money does drive unstipulated outcomes in the Healthcare system. From a doctor's point of view, in the documentary we have seen cases of doctors who really care about their patients and their service is primarily patient wellness driven. But we cannot undermine the fact that doctors and people in general look for financial well being too. Dedication to help people is the main drive that many choose to be doctors, but it is when they join the hospitals that money gets intertwined making it difficult for a balance between service and finance. Reforms in the system are required to strike this balance.
ReplyDelete