Connecting The Dots of Healthcare

Happy Independence Day!

In truth, Independence Day is only a birthday, celebrated every year for the lifetime of those who remember, and love, our nation. Simply being born does now endow one with greatness. If our nation survived only long enough to die in infancy, there would be no celebration, no fireworks, no memory. History is written retrograde, but our future is antegrade. The actions of our forebearers were contemporary with their thoughts and only in hindsight have become history.

Today, in another time, it is no different for us. The decisions we make today in healthcare to determine our actions and the future of healthcare for our descendents will be no less the history that speaks to us from Edward Jenner or Florence Nightingale.

Healthcare as we know it today in the United States had an obscure birth. When the early European settlers came to these shores, it was the Pastor who was the de facto physician. Disease was interpreted as God’s will, a punishment for sins to many.  Who better equipped to communicate with God, and disease of man, than a Pastor? Later, the Doctorate of Theology and the Doctorate of Medicine evolved to diverge and today we continue evolving into an increasingly diverse speciation of medical specialization for both medical professionals and medical para-professionals.  Collectively, we form a nation unto itself. A Nation of Healthcare.  As such, we should learn from our nation’s forebearers, how a great nation might grow to be.

Concerning the newly formed United States of America in 1790, Noah Webster wrote prudent advice to the his fellow countrymen that, “independence and union render it necessary that the citizens of different States should know each others characters and circumstances; that all jealousies should be removed; that mutual respect and confidence should succeed, and a harmony of views and interests be cultivated by a friendly intercourse.” Mr. Webster was, in an 18th century fashion, simply trying to connect-the-dots in a diverse population that helped create the nation we are blessed to live in.

So what does this mean to healthcare? What kind of a Nation of Healthcare are we talking about? What could we become?

According to the CIA World Factbook, the US Gross Domestic Product for 2006 was approximately $13,130,000,000.00. And if healthcare is approximately 16% of the GDP, (according to IBM, who I believe have the wherewith-all to really crunch some numbers), well, that calculates out to be just a mere hundred million dollars over a cool 2 trillion dollars.

Wow. That represents the GDP of the U. S. Nation of Healthcare. To put that in perspective, France’s GDP, the sixth highest GDP in the world, is 2.126 trillion dollars. The U. S. Nation of Healthcare was edged out by France by a paltry 26 million dollars, give or take a few hundred thousand.

 In 2004, there were an estimated 13.5 million healthcare workers in the U.S., making healthcare the largest single U.S. Industry according the the US Department of Labor, (as opposed to the Labor and Delivery Department of a Hospital). For France to get their GDP, it required 27.88 million workers. Roughly, twice as many workers as the Healthcare workers in the U.S. Nation of  Healthcare. But then again, the French don’t have as long a work week as we do in the U.S., (35 hours per week), and don’t they take the Month of August off as well? And then, naturellement, there’s all that wine to consume in France that we don’t drink in the U.S. Nation of Healthcare. (France used to have a 39 hour work week but I guess they had trouble consuming all that wine without the additional four hours a week off. Fortunately for us,  despite the wine consumption, the French were there when we needed them during our Revolution. Merci!)

For such a rich and contributing nation, the U.S. Nation of Healthcare is an economic and social wonder. If you were to add the sum total of all the contributions of the WORLD Nation of Healthcare, I daresay, it would easily exceed the GDP of the US, the top placeholder of National GDP.

Our Nation of Healthcare is valuable from an economic perspective and we are invaluable from a social basis. It would help us all, and our patients, to know other “dots of healthcare” characters and circumstances, to remove jealousies and turf battles and give other “dots” mutual respect and confidence to express different views and interests but in harmony through friendly intercourse. Coorperation, Collaboration, Community, Communication, Conversation all lead to Understanding and CONNECTION.

From a global perspective, our counterparts in other “Nations of Healthcare” are universally connected to us and each other by shared values for patient care. We should not be limited by political borders to flex our collective healthcare muscles.

Can you imagine a world lead by people who devote their lives in the service of others? Of preserving life? Of alleviating suffering and disease? If we are able to connect to each other in mutually supportive ways, imagine what good we could do for patients and ourselves in not only a U. S. but a Global Nation of Healthcare.

So on this birthday of the U.S., I offer a special tribute to the our own US Nation of Healthcare and all the Nations of Healthcare, of which we also ”mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”