Monday, March 09, 2015
Reinventing Health Care
The February 23 issue of The Boston Globe carried an article
headlined “To reinvent health care is goal of 22 fellows. The lead sentence read as follows:
“Harvard Medical School’s Center for Primary Care has
launched InciteHealth Fellowship, a new program that brings together 22
talented individuals eager to transform the delivery of health care in the
United States.”
I wish them luck, but caution them to be modest in their
expectations.
It is easy for us to ignore the depth to which our system of
health care is rooted in our culture.
Our feelings about the importance of health are intense. Our attitudes towards the caring professions
and our relationships with them are strongly held. Those feelings and attitudes change over time,
but very slowly.
As is often the case with the print media, the content of
the Globe article didn’t quite live up to its headline. The project as explained seems more oriented
to the use of technology to improve care than to a total redesign of the health
care system.
Useful gadgets and computer applications are always welcome but reinventing health care
requires tinkering with the organ located between our ears.
