Healthcare organizations are unique beasts. One of the unique things is the number of different participating groups- health systems, payers, accountable care organizations, payers, just to name a few.

What is the current state of healthcare? Where does the healthcare stand today? Are we ahead of what people think or do we still have to long way to go?

Articles on social media channels that carry a sense of apprehension regarding the future of our healthcare system sadden me. However,  I learned a long time ago that you never win by arguing with the referee, and that the most logical way to react to apprehensions is to prove them wrong based on concrete evidence.

US healthcare is nowhere near what technology made us dream of a decade back. Healthcare technology was meant to act as a means of reducing costs, eliminating burnout, and making care delivery patient-centric. Cut to today, where a broken leg can cost a patient as much as $7,500, 7 out of 10 physicians do not recommend their profession to anyone, and we rank poorly among other developed countries in terms of the number of preventable deaths.

In 2018, a New York man died of cancer in conditions which were far from unique. The man wasn’t able to decipher when his cancer symptoms first appeared, because allegedly, his EHR did not accurately display his medical history on progress notes. The patient had a suspicion that the integrity of his medical records was not being maintained, which ultimately led to his death. Claiming breach of ‘fiduciary duty’ and ‘gross negligence,’ the estate of the deceased patient filed a $1 billion lawsuit against the EHR company.

What makes Super Bowls, banking transactions, and online search results altogether more special?

Let’s imagine for a second.

What do the best care teams in healthcare have in common? 

Healthcare has seen a number of life-saving breakthroughs: vaccines, anesthesia, bypass surgery, the balloon catheter, and even decoding the human genome sequence. These have all changed the face of healthcare, transforming how we do things around here. But there’s one breakthrough which we have known is coming for a long time now. 

What causes two patients of the same age and with the same disease but from different regions to respond differently to a certain treatment? Even if these two patients appeared similar on paper, their lifestyles are very likely to differ- socioeconomic status, gender, race, ethnicity, family structure, and education.