In the wake of the a national tragedy, and shame, the collapse of the I-35 Bridge in Minneapolis, our The State newspaper today is pointing out the fact that more than 1,000 South Carolina bridges have the same deficiency rating as the one that came down yesterday in Minnesota. I’m sure this is applicable for many states too.
 ”See, I told you so!” the pundits are saying.
After a similar incident in the 80’s, then Governor William O’Neill of Connecticut made it a personal mission to achieve the highest state bridge safety rating of the nation. It was by that personal leadership Connecticut now has safe bridges.
But there are other dangerous bridges. The bridge between hospitals and physicians. Between patients and providers. The bridges between Medicare and caregivers. Healthcare needs someone who can build bridges of connectivity between all the dots of healthcare to make efficient use of funding, to make sense of a malpractice environment gone berserk, to make patient care excellence initiatives work to benefit caregivers as well as patients, and to unburden cost issues to underfunded providers to achieve mutually beneficial advances in healthcare.
I don’t know who this person will be. I haven’t seen this person yet in the run-up to the presidential elections but it’s a bigger task than a single person, even if President, can accomplish. It will require a joint cooperative effort between many different entities, “dots of healthcare,” to take steps to keep patient care centered. To keep the goal of real patient results ahead of personal or party results.
If I see that person who, like Governor O’Neill decides to make this a very personal mission, I’ll let you know and hope that if you see that person before I do, you’ll do the same for me. We can’t afford the luxury of waiting until the Healthcare Bridge that links our health, and our children’s health, collapses. I don’t want to have to endure the “I told you so’s” from the silent, but oh - so knowledgeable pundits, who can see everything coming in such clarity, but don’t step up with a solution first.
How does South Carolina make bridges safer? According to the paper, it’s $3 Billion dollars over 20 years. And that’s to fix structures that are primarily concrete and steel. Anyone who doesn’t think fixing healthcare, and making patients safer, without an influx of funding that makes $3 Billion x (50 states) look like chump-change or someone that thinks we can “fix” healthcare in less than an equal 20 years, needs to wake up and stop smelling the ether, or whatever they’re smoking inside the Beltway these days.
 Fixing bridges is expensive business. Both on interstates and in healthcare.
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