Blue skies... It is a beautiful day here in this little college town. The sun is shining and at 11 AM it is about 78 degrees with a barely perceptible breeze. People are out walking on Main Street and riding their bikes. The mountain nearby calls: I can go for a hike today with my dog and still be within 20 minutes or so of the hospital to respond to calls. A mostly empty hospital There are two patients on the hospitalist service in this fine critical access hospital. That is a tiny workload for my profession--hospitalists, who take care of patients in the hospital who have no primary care physician or whose doctor doesn't manage their care while they are inpatients, usually don't complain unless they are managing over 18 patients in a day. I am often quite busy, but not today. One of my two patients is going home later this morning. She is bright and cheerful, with progressive Alzheimer's disease and chronic lung disease from a long gone habit of smoking 3 packs of c...
The cost of health care in the US is higher than anywhere else in the world, and yet we are not healthier than our peer nations. In fact, in terms of such measures as infant mortality and life span, we don't measure up. Why is this? Many people involved in providing or receiving care have some pretty good ideas about what costs so much, and what we can do to reduce costs and improve quality. Sharing these stories is an important step in creating affordable universal health care.