Catalyst for Change

Healthcare is my passion.  I love it but also see a need for change.  Working as a nurse over the years has made me see all the problems that healthcare has.  The dysfunction of an non-integrated healthcare system that leads to huge failures to our patients.  While working as a clinical research coordinator, I was able to spend more time with my patients.  In research you have to follow up on every little detail and through doing this I began to see a problem.
When patients were released from the hospital there was no one following up on their care.  I saw patients that were released for heart failure that had no follow up on medications, labs, and/or x-rays.  By the time I would see them in my office, I would contact the doctor and get them the test or medications they were missing.  I began to ask...how many other patients were out there that didn't have someone advocating for their care?  Why is there no communication between the doctors taking care of these patients and the patients themselves?  The patients would see a specialist and they would expect the family doc to follow up with them and the family doc would think the specialist would be following up on the patient.  All the while the patient had no clue they even needed to follow up with anyone.  Is it the doctors fault or the patients?  Well, neither.  It was a breakdown of multiple systems of communication.

We need to see changes....I guess we are finally starting to with the healthcare reform.  The problem is, what is the best way to "fix" what has been broken for so long?  How can we as healthcare providers work together to decrease the cost and risk that is associated with changing a system?  Well that is what I would like to start exploring.  Solutions to the insurmountable problems we see in healthcare.