Photo Courtesy of Fox Business News
While combing through NPR this weekend, I found an article titled, “To Prevent Repeat Hospitalizations, Talk To Patients” by Sarah Mccammon to be quite interesting. The article talked about changes and improvements in patient-doctor communications as an important method for sustainable health. The article elaborated that those patients who establish deep rapport and trust with their doctors beyond prescriptions and checkups tended to be have improved health situations.
Although this is certainly great news, I believe it also highlights a lot of the issues within our healthcare system. Communication between patients and physicians is as effective as medicine. But too often, both come up short. From the perspective of an anthropological and a regular patient, I have noticed that healthcare system in this country tends to be skewed towards profit than the delivery of care. Thus many people have continuously suffered despite having access to medications because their physicians are more dedicated towards profit than health provision. I believe this also relates to specific attitudes people develop towards health as they often become aware that health institutions value their monies more than their lives.
This article points to a lot of changes that can be made to improve healthcare in our society. For instance, with improved communication between patients and physicians, a lot of hospital visits would be prevented as patients learn more ways to care for themselves. Additionally, some of unnecessary costs of Medicaid due to constant hospital can be prevented, which will also mean taxpayer dollars are being put to good use. Finally, I believe physicians will serve their true purposes as health providers and teacher, not exploiters.
NaNa Asare 