Medical Housing Crisis

In an effort to improve our ailing healthcare system and enhance health outcomes of patients, several states, the federal government and private insurers are experimenting with paying primary-care doctors extra money to oversee and coordinate patients' care rather than just provide isolated services. The idea is to recreate an era when a trusted family physician helped patients through hospitalizations, coordinated specialist care and provided routine screenings.  It is called the "medical home" concept. By creating patient care "teams," which could include nurse practitioners, nutritionists or other medical staff and by offering longer office hours, electronic medical records and same-day appointments, the hope is that patients would turn to a trusted adviser, either the doctor or another team member, for preventive and routine care — and rely on that person to help coordinate needed screenings, specialist visits and other care. Clearly something is badly needed in healthcare and while this idea is laudable, I believe we need and can go much farther than creating “Medical superstores.” While the "health megastore", like its non medical counterpart “Super Wall-Mart”, has merit, offers “one stop shopping” for patients and may lead to financial rewards for the healthcare industry if costs can be significantly brought down, it remains to be seen if 1) they can deliver on the prevention promise or 2) if enough patients will want to use them to significantly impact national health problems. If we can take "Super Wal-Marts" as an example, it's clear that they are an option some, but are hardly the answer for all that ails retail. Fewer and fewer shoppers want to buy everything in one place. Increasingly shoppers are shopping for food, music, automobiles, clothes and even healthcare from "vendors" around the world, through their technology. They shop online, they use their cell phones and even on TV. They shop when they want, not just when the store is open, and they do it from the comfort of their homes, offices, cars and while walking down the street. So unless medical homes are going to be run 24/7, be accessible in person and online and provide multiple options for savvy health consumers who are comparing health value and who want to make informed decisions and receive their care when they want it, the whole concept may be more like a Norman Rockwell painting – A beautiful idea that takes us back to days gone by, considered valuable to some, affordable by even fewer, but for the most part, largely irrelevant for the masses- than it is a healthcare solution. We no longer live in an era gone by, and while many of us may want to get back to that time, the world has changed and will continue to change – with or without us. The question is, can healthcare recapture the trust and values of an era gone by yet adapt to the present and future realities of the world we all live in now. We can make health care more patient centered, convenient and affordable in a way that doesn’t alienate providers and improves health outcomes for all. We will not achieve this though until we embrace the changes in our world as opportunities to make things better rather than seeking to retrofit healthcare to an era that once was. Why isn’t healthcare available “on Demand”, 24/7, with multiple access points (in person or otherwise) that reflect the societal, economic and socicultural realities of today. I believe that we not only can, but we must, otherwise we may yet see another housing crisis in our country, only this time it will be in the Medical Home business.