Time mag essays illustrate cliched flaws in our healthcare

In the May 1st issue of Time, an article titled "What Doctors Hate About Hospitals" showed that even physicians, being the smartest guys & girls in the room so to speak, have a hard time getting their insurance companies to pay for procedures that made sense & were shocked by how often medical mistakes -- like a discrepancy between how much of a medicine the doctor prescribes and how much is actually given to a patient by the nurse -- are made in top-notch hospitals.

While the article isn't available to people like me who do not subscribe to the magazine, the related essay "How to Fix the System" written by Dr. Donald Berwick, president of the Institute of Healthcare Improvement, is.

One of his recommendations encourage the formation of a nationalized healthcare system:

The assertion that making health care a human right isn't feasible — isn't affordable — nearly makes me mad. It's just not true; in fact, we are the only developed Western country that fails to view health care as a human right. Leadership for change must come from the President and Congress. Without the promise of health care for all, we aren't likely to muster the energy and political will we need to meet the needs of our entire population.

Another recommendation places the responsibility of care not on the system or the government but on the individual:

The more control patients have over their own care—the more they know, the more involved they are in the design of their care—the better... Some people fear that, given choices, patients will not choose wisely or will demand too much. I doubt it—one study found that when patients actively shared in decisions about whether to have surgery, the rate of surgery fell 23% and satisfaction and outcomes both improved.

And while I try to maintain a non-partisan perspective by not taking sides on policy prescriptions, I feel no guilt in asserting that this recommendation makes plain sense:

Our current system of fragmented payment — for hospital stays, office visits, lab tests, drugs, and therapists — destroys the patterns of care that patients need, and leaves them confused and, too often, simply abandoned. Funding care for people over time, instead of for specific medical events, reduces the burden of illness by focusing on high quality preventive care.

To paraphrase Dr. Berwick, he believes implementing these seven recommendations will fix our healthcare system(s): making healthcare a basic right, incentivizing preventative medicine instead of acute care, enabling patients to make their own healthcare decisions, digitizing medical records, using techniques from engineering and human behavioral science to improve processes in care, encouraging people to have careers in primary care and nursing, and teaching people that conservative care is better care.