Last week I found myself in the emergency room at 1am, voluntarily checking myself in.
I ended up there after being sick for several days. A throat virus, turned into an infection, and made it almost impossible for me to eat because of the pain. The doctor I saw a few days earlier didn’t prescribe me antibiotics, which I finally got at the ER. She saw me at the beginning of my illness, but wasn’t there to check when things got worse suddenly.
This is a pretty frequent scenario that applies to a lot more than just sore throats. Despite our affluence, the US Healthcare system is broken.
Healthcare Unbound
Way back in 2002, some smart folks at Forrester research postulated it can be solved with technology — an idea they called Healthcare Unbound:
Healthcare’s costs, coverage problems, and demographic pressures mean system overload; its formal institutions can’t cope with the future. What will ease the pain? A major shift, enabled by technology, to self-care, mobile care, and home care.
Seven years later, as we face doctor and nurse shortages, and swine flu, this apt solution hasn’t taken hold, but here’s hoping it that will change.
I think technology is a great enabler, but having worked in Tech for about 15 years, I have to say that Tech by itself will not solve a problem. On the contrary, if done incorrectly, tech can make a problem worse.
In your case, better identification of your initial problem would have been a better solution.
Hey Frugal — Health care is a topic I admittedly know very little about. it seems broken to me, but you’re right, identifying the specifics of the problem is the first step. Thanks for the comment.