“Trust Me, I’m a Doctor”
“Trust me, I’m a Doctor”. Words that were spoken in the past; today, not so much. Trust in doctors has eroded; a 2014 study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that only 34 percent of Americans have great confidence in the leaders of the medical profession. Everything has changed……The global burden of disease is shifting from infectious diseases to noncommunicable diseases, with chronic conditions such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, and pulmonary disease now being the chief causes of death globally, according to a new WHO report published May 19, 2008.
Here are a couple of facts; 1. Medical Illnesses have changed from communicable to non-communicable diseases (these are the chronic illnesses..which most are caused by our poor eating habits with our SAD (Standard American Diet) and impaired lifestyle behaviors (lack of exercise, stress, impaired sleeping, etc.) and 2. our Healthcare System has changed . Insurance payments are based on treatment procedures; not preventive care or coordination of care; thus the concept of ‘a pill for every ill’ has become a common mantra. We now are taking pills to treat the side effects from the original pills. Services such as preventive care and care coordination are not considered ‘Health Care’ nor are they payable procedures. and 3. Medical Students have huge costs to recover so they are being funneled into specialties with increased earning potential (as well as greater prestige), thus creating a deficit of primary care doctors.
Referral is the name of the game today in medicine with patients shuttled from one specialist to another with no one looking at the bigger picture of the patient’s well-being.
As our funding for care becomes more systematically controlled by government and insurance guidelines along with increasing restrictions from various federal and state medical mandates, we can see that this is looking more and more like a perfect storm with each of us paddling in the wrong direction by . This SAD (Standard American Diet) and our impaired lifestyle is giving us a dramatic increase in obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, heart disease and a multitude of diseases, disabilities, and death in the past 20 years. Oh, let’s not forget the Baby Boom generation, which represents a quarter of the U.S. population, is beginning to hit retirement age; a period of life when we become more vulnerable to illness and chronic health conditions.
The reality is quite obvious; ‘Health Care’ is actually ‘Disease Management’, which is highly influenced and driven by money. We have a Disease Management System with the loss of personalized attention or care. The “System”, by it’s very nature of seeking cost efficiency has forever altered the treatment we seek yet is nowhere to be found. Medical treatment has changed and we, too, must chang; we must begin to take care of ourselves in a more healthy way than ever before. This is why, we must change our mindset…the practice of medicine is now in the hands of “The System” but the practice of staying healthy is in our hands. Stay healthy my friends, Vegan Doc 12/18/18
