Is Our Current Medical System in Critical Condition

8/9/2019 Is Our Current Medical System in Critical Condition

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Is Our Current Medical System

In Critical Condition?

225,000 deaths per year occur fromiatrogenic causes (12,000 from unnecessary surgery,7,000 from medication errors, 20,000 from hospital related errors,80,000 from hospital contracted infections and 106,000 from non-error, negative effects of drugs).

third leading cause of death followingheart disease and cancer.(JAMA)


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Costs are projected to reach 3.14trillion by 2012 (Webb,2003).

The U.S. government spends $5,035

per person on health care annually We are rated #1 by WHO for chronic

degenerative diseases and next to last

place for industrialized countries in 14indicators for health.


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Drug Therapy

Americans are on an average of 9.9

medications per person.

Americans spent $208 billion in2001 for prescription drugs, double

that of 1996.


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Satisfaction? 1 in 7 Americans report being dissatisfied

with conventional care.

Patient satisfaction surveys reveal that less

than 80% of people feel their initial

complaint was satisfactorily resolved when

they left the office.


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Cost

We spend more money than any othernation (13% of the GNP) on healthcare.

Only 2% of healthcare budget is currentlydevoted to prevention though we know thatevery dollar spent on prevention saves

$10.00 in eventual treatment costs.

Health insurance is the #1 burden ofbusiness (Forbes, 2003)


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How is our Heath Report Card? Diabetes is now at epidemic proportions (17

million with diabetes, 157,000 under 20 years old.

Between 1990 and 1998 diabetes increased by70%.

Two thirds of Americans are overweight, obesitycosts $118 billion annually.

Poor nutrition habits linked to 146 billion inmedical costs annually.

Sedentary habits cost 76.6 trillion per year

Cost of chronic disease more than 1 trillion/year


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One in six cancer deaths could be preventedby losing weight.

Arthritis afflicts 1 in 3 U.S. adults (CDC)

40 million Americans suffer from chronic

pain, 66 million from arthritis, 5 millionfrom low back pain, with an average of 93lost workdays per person for those withchronic pain (NIMH)

Musculo-skeletal conditions cost anestimated 254 billion each year.


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50 million have heart disease. Each year

729,000 people die from stroke or heart

disease.

Asthma has doubled.

Autism is the fastest growing disability in

America with about 400,000 currently

diagnosed (NIH, 2003)

Health industry estimates the total # ofcancer cases by 2020 at 15 million, about

50% more than we have today.


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What Are We Missing? 75% of what doctors typically see in the

office are complaints related to nutrition,

lack of energy, weight control, sleep,

chronic digestive issues, depression, anxiety

60-90% of reasons people seek care are

because of human elements, (stress-relatedproblems (Lown, 1996).


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Are We Even Listening? The patient is interrupted in an average

of 23 seconds after he or she begins totalk

There is no reimbursement for talking,

or guidance, only for procedures, testsor prescriptions


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Universal Human Needs

significance

competence

power

integrity, a sense of belonging


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Universal Processes of Healthy

Systems

Expansion Expression

Equilibrium

Exchange


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Current System versus Ideal Bureaucratic/paternalistic/dependent

Practitioner based

Illness orientation (especially acute)

Healing as science

Linear thinking

Specialties and separation

External approaches

Reactive/fear based

Practitioners untouchable

Treating the heart

Repetitive maintenance costs Sense of community absent

Symptom suppression

Healthcare as business

Democratic/ autonomous

Partnership based

Wellness orientation

Healing as art and science

Spiral thinking

Wholistic

Internal and external approaches

Proactive

Wounded healer concept

Treating matters of the heart

Savings on wellness Sense of community vital

Symptoms are signals

Healthcare as viable service


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Current: Ideal: Billable services for procedures

Quick fix

Values doing over being

Values producing over thinking

Values tangible over intangible

Diagnosis focus

Rushed/ less time to do less

Research outside of paradigm

discounted Illness has person

Billable services include talk time

Lifestyle fix

Values being and doing

Values thinking and producing

Values intangible and tangible

Innate healing focus

Time taken

All research considered and

examined Person has illness


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Singular Evolution of Medicine

Circa 4000 BC

First recorded historyIllness was seen as a result of angering

the gods

The healer was seen as possessingmagical abilities


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Circa 500 BC for over 800 years- Greekinfluence (Hippocrates- father of medicine)

Humanism movement

Partnership based

Healing journeys

Medical spas

Environmental issues (Treatise on Air,Water and Places)

Physician heal thyself


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Middle Ages

Monks were more scholars than

experimentalistsMythic and dogmatic thinking

Little reward for independence and

curiosity


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Dark Ages

BlackDeath in 1300s killed 1/3

of population, faith in doctorswas lost and the supernatural once

again reigned


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Renaissance (rebirth)

inspired by civic pride

permeated by a revisitation of humanism

(humanists were opposed to superstition and

favored critical observation)Greeks (with their historical record keeping)fled to Italy and continued their scientific

inquiry in an atmosphere of artistic andliterary development

Blend of mind, body and spirit


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Scientific Revolution

During the 1500s and 1600s scientific

method became the new god.

Heavily influenced by the ideas of:

Rene Descartes

Francis Bacon

Isac NewtonBeginning of the separation of mind-body-

spirit


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The dogma of any tightly controlled

group, (in this case, the scientificcommunity), has a history of being as

capable of hindering the development

of knowledge as promoting it.

There is no danger in unanswered

questions, only in unquestioned

answers


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Age of Enlightenment

New permission to engage in detachedobservation as the constraints of religioustradition were lifted

Inventions of microscope, stethoscope,ophthalmoscope, pathology, etc. (the abilityto see within) led to the rapid expansion of

pharmacology and surgery and to formal

training for physicians.Medicine began to become mechanistic andreductionistic as the body was seen bit by

bit, piece by piece.


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18th Century

Medicine raised to godlike status with thedevelopment of the smallpox vaccination(Edward Jenner). As promised in the bible the

blind were made to see, only not by faith butby cataract surgery (Benson, 96)

This was a time that life expectancy was 30years and of all children died before theirfirst birthday.


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Pasteurs germ theory would go along way toextend life.

In 1859 Darwins treatise on Survival ofthe fittest set the stage for life being in a

constant struggle with potential invaders(germs).

The marriage of these two ideas created theage of magic bullets (anti-toxins, anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterials, anti-tussives,anti-cholesterol, etc.


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Technical Revolution (1900s)

Further separation as body is seen as a

machine that can be fixed with machines

Field of psychiatry split off (by the 1930s

the Index Medicus had not one reference tothe patients emotions and mental state).

Schools of naturopathy, homeopathy,

osteopathy, chiropractic no longeraccredited


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Nutritional education removedInstitutions organized by diseases andorgans

(American Lung Association

National Cancer Institute

National Institute of Infectious Diseases

Faster information led to more

specialization (knowledge=power)Problem orientation (Problem charting)


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The individual isevaluated but scarcely

encountered.


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The Human PotentialMovement

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Is Our Current Medical System in Critical Condition