In the past year, the health care debate has been all about treating illness and how to pay for it. Missing from the conversation is a simply powerful idea: living healthy everyday.
Certainly there's room in the conversation to explore how we can make living healthy as routine as commuting to work or changing our socks. Why isn't this approach to health part of the treatment plan?
To find out, we decided to take the temperature of what people think and do about their health. As part of GE's healthymagination program, we partnered with Cleveland Clinic and Ochsner Health Systems to ask more than 2,000 Americans about their healthy living attitudes, behaviors and barriers, and their relationships with their doctors. We also asked more than 1,200 experts who know Americans' health best--doctors and other healthcare professionals--to weigh in.
We were surprised to find that Americans are engaged in some pretty magical thinking about their health.
First, the patient-doctor relationship needs work. Physicians not only help cure our illnesses -- they also help prevent them. But they can't do the latter if people don't seek their help, and in the right way.
In our study, 70 percent of respondents said they have taken actions to avoid going to the doctor, including walking around in pain or asking friends for medical advice. And when Americans do go for a checkup, 77 percent of health care professionals say at least one-fourth of their patients omit facts or downright lie to them about their personal health.
Second, we found that Americans just aren't walking the talk about their everyday health.
Promisingly, 71 percent of respondents said they have a plan for living healthy, and nine of 10 said eating healthy and exercising are part of their healthy living plan. And one-third gave themselves an "A" grade on specific daily health activities, like exercise, eating healthy, and managing stress. So far so good.
But here's the catch: more than 90 percent of doctors gave Americans a grade of "C" or lower on these same activities across the board. Further, less than half of Americans know their current cholesterol levels, only one-third know their daily caloric intake, and just 29 percent know their blood sugar level. More know how many vacation days they have left (47 percent) than they do the number of calories they ate yesterday (43 percent).
It's encouraging that so many Americans seem to get how important healthy living is. But the gap between what patients believe and do, and what doctors know to be true, shows that confusion reigns. Clearly, there's an unanswered need, and a big opportunity, to begin using imagination, communication, and technology to help people make the shift from "fix-it" to prevention.
So how do we start?
At GE, we decided we could take some small first steps to help people get more from their doctor visits. We developed an easy-to-use online check-up with WebMD, called The Better Health Conversation, which walks users through questions to ask their doctor about what ails them, and points to information they should have before they get to the doctor's office.
The idea is to learn how to consider your health more carefully before you arrive at an appointment--and to shoot for a more collaborative, more honest relationship with your doctor.
Technology has greatly advanced the treatment of illness. Now let's put it to work for prevention with simpler, smaller, more cost-effective innovations like portable medical devices, home health monitoring, and health IT that lets doctors share patient information with each other. These are the kinds of user-friendly solutions we're working on at GE to improve the quality of health care, making it less costly and available to more people.
It's time to begin seeing our health not as an overwhelming hurdle, but as a series of daily achievable steps. It's time to put resources behind practical approaches and tools that people will actually use. Together, we can make better health contagious.
Beth Comstock is Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer at GE.
Follow Beth Comstock on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bethcomstock
Leo Galland, M.D.: Mixing Medications and Vitamins: When It Hurts, When It Helps
Thomas Goetz: Welcome To The Era Of Personalized Medicine
Andrew Rubin: Health Care: Effecting Change From the Ground
Health care - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An example of a glaring omission - you should inform your doctor of your living and working environment. We now know that a great deal of illness results from a toxic environment. Large corporations have poisoned the air, water, and ground throughout the country.
For example, assuming your doctor is environmental-medicine literate, he/she would be interested to know if you live or work near toxic waste sites (GE), such as the Hudson and Housatonic rivers in NY. Or are you near any chemical plants that produce toxins such as PCBs (GE).
For more information on this issue, Google: general electric toxic waste .
Roy Mankovitz, Director
http://www.MontecitoWellness.com
A patient is always measuring how a doctor will "take" what she/he says/does and deciding if what she says/does will fuss the doctor in a way that will affect how that physician treats her/him. We will shut up if we decide the "truth" will harm the resultant treatment.
I'm a senior female. I note that when I visit any of my doctors with my husband in the room, I get more serious attention--except for the one female physician I have found, my favorite physician, who always treats me with respect and always explains so that I can understand how to treat myself when I am at home.
Then if you polled all Americans, not just those that can afford health insurance, then the grade would go to an INCOMPLETE.
So what exactly is preventing the average American from staying healthy? Do corporations (insurance, hospitals, doctors) over-feed us; make us smoke and prevent us from exercising? Or do corporations stop us from taking our medications (when we are sick); or prevent us caring of our sick parents and other first degree relatives, specially in their dying days?
We are all complaining about a rotten healthcare system that we made for ourselves. It is time we end the "want our cake and eat it too" philosophy.
I am not on an HMO, have good insurance and good doctors, but the system is flawed. Also, doctors don't stay in the same practice forever. I have had female doctors that left the practice when they decided to spend more time with children, male doctors that go to another practice because it is more lucrative. The medical profession is just another big business.
This fine is chump change to Pfizer.
Sadly this is just the tip of the iceberg, Medicine no longer is about health,it's about making money, supressing cures to protect revenues streams, and denying health freedom, and profiting on keeping American's sick.
Mabye this is why the FDA recently threatened Dr. Andrew Weil.
Of course, you can prevent data from going into your permanent insurance record by paying for appointments yourself, what the industry calls a "self-pay." Good luck with that. Last time I paid for a 20-minute health care consultation, it cost me $500.
A doctor my healthcare partner? What planet are you living on.
Then see an alternative chiropractor, for gentle non-pressure adjustments; have a massage or energy healing treatment or acupuncture, take herbs or supplements, have herbal tea, see a homeopathic doctor, etc. UNLESS it is an emergency situation.
When we eat processed chemicals (food), take vaccines that give us more chemicals and disease, get little sun, sit in front of our televisions, and computers, why expect an MD to get us well? Most MD's train in surgery and pharmaceuticals. ... not nutrition, or alternative gentle means to stay healthy.
These exist in abundance with skilled and qualified practitioners across our country.
At the Institute of Medicine's Summit on Integrative Medicine and Health Care there was overwhelming support for the inclusion of integrative medicine into the mainstream, which means paid for by insurance.
The following week, when health care summits began, there was no mention of this. As long as we rely on the existing system for health care, we will never save money, and only the insurance companies and pharmaceutical stockholders will get rich. There are alternatives and we can all live long and healthy lives if we make the right choices.
Make your choice and make it well... this is your body and your health and your life!
Of course there is no mention of nutrition and alt. therapies. Big Pharma likes the idea of keeping us sick and since those at the health "summit" are in the pockets of Big Pharma, it's will not be suprising
if this issue goes by the wayside.
One thing worth mentioning-- this type of alternative care is rarley affordable for most people--esp. the chronically ill.
These practitioners need who specialize in alternative care need to keep that in mind if they really care about treating
patients and finding out the underlying cause of their illness.
the "parent /child" paradigm of the doctor/patient relationship and towards the healthier modes of health care that alternative health care has offered for over 3 decades now. It's time we stop this fiction that doctors have much to do with "health" and a lot to do with keeping disease right where it is- in society.
It's time to put energy into improving rather than poisoning our food sources, which are at the root of disease , obesity and mental illness. it's time to admit that many many people see massage therapists, yoga teachers, herbalists, naturopaths, and nutrition counselors rather than "wait" to "get sick" so their
"insurance" will pay .
With due respect this a common reasoning. Everybody has "an imperative to see a doctor." Irrespective of insurance, likely the cost of a doctor's visits comes out of a deductible. How much would that be? Cost of going to a ballgame? The cost factor is an excuse. Insurance plans where mammograms are covered do not have a higher screening rate than if mammogram is not covered.
The "imperative of a man to see his doctor" is also known as - wife, mother, sister, girlfriend. Even in adult life, women are more tuned into healthcare than men; and the women should exercise their prerogative.:=)) It is better to be a pain in the neck, than crying at the funeral.
I go to him when I can't help myself, when things like depression get to more than I can manage by myself, and that is only when really bad things happens. Otherwise... and please don't start shouting at me now, Yoga and meditation keep me healthy, they enable me to access my own power and I just don't get sick. It's true.
If the patient decides to stay with a doctor, then start liking him/her, treat them with respect and follow their recommendations. If the patient thinks they know more than their doctor or still worse, bust their chops for fun, (or becasue we are Americans), find another target.
Besides being trained professionals, a doctor and their staff are the patients' friends, not their entertainers or their baby-sitters - for that we all have family.