Today's Practice: Changing the Business of Medicine TP2018Q2DigitalEditionWeb | Page 84

T E CHNOL OGY
Integrative Medicine
Consider instead what it would feel like to be part of a
medical system soaring from the bottom to the top in
global clinical outcomes and efficiencies - out perform-
ing France, Australia, Germany, Canada, Sweden,
Norway, the UK and Switzerland and all the other
industrialized countries that we currently trail despite
our over spending. Did you know they routinely use
simple, proven, safe technologies for getting excellent
clinical outcomes? We should keep our eyes searching
as this is instructive for open-minded physicians because
the metrics show the global medical enterprise is outper-
forming us in several areas.
Imagine a future when our standards-of-care would
never tolerate 128,000 annual deaths in the United
States from adverse drug reactions (prescription deaths),
which roughly equates to 340-350 deaths per day. As
stated in prior articles, our healthcare system is crashing
a fully loaded 747 airliner everyday filled with our
friends, colleagues, and family members who believe
they are getting safe, effective and vetted medical care.
Can you imagine the outcry from the nation and its
leaders if that ever happened? The equivalent loss of life
is happening every year with prescription medications.
We have a moral imperative and physicians have taken
an ancient oath to significantly mitigate this awful situa-
tion using any & all means available. Are we really open
and exploring all means available? The aviation industry
invested enormous financial and human resources to
achieve their brilliant and enviable safety record.
Imagine what we could achieve for our patients with
similar emphasis. Envision when our medical system’s
reliability, and attention to detail intercedes to prevent
medical misadventures as effectively as other high regret
professions, such as aviation and nuclear power, where
systemic errors are ruthlessly identified and crushed out
of existence - ensuring that they never repeat.
Imagine the relief for 200,000 American families whose
loved ones will not have to die a senseless death next
year from dangerous procedures when other more safe
modalities could have worked first. These are our
friends, family and colleagues that will be saved.
Imagine when our system will routinely save the
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Peter F. Demitry, MD, MPH
“Our healthcare system is
crashing a fully loaded 747
airliner everyday filled with
our friends, colleagues, and
family members who believe
they are getting safe, effective
and vetted medical care.”
340,000 American lives currently lost as the profession
steps up and embraces a culture where every life really
does matter, rather then merely ‘saying’ that every life
matters. This will and must change as the same carnage
year-over-year will cause the system to erode all credi-
bility and implode. It’s starting already. Imagine what
it will mean as a profession when our health-care
system isn’t the fourth common cause of death in
America and admission into a hospital doesn’t require a
full time family advocate in attendance as the ‘real’
insurance policy for survival.
To attain this brighter future, US medicine will need
many more tools in its Doctors’ Bag in addition to its
pharmaceutical arsenal. Visualize a dozen new modal-
ities supported by clinical outcomes and evidence that
could be rapidly transitioned into your clinical
practice. Imagine a profession that embraces rapid safe
technology transition paradigms rather than the
current 14-23 years (or longer) currently needed
despite FDA approval and decades of evidence to
change the standard. Imagine criteria for rapid clinical
adoption being based on negligible side effects, efficacy,
safety and cost profiles which are openly compared
with currently accepted therapies of care for your
critical review. What would it be like for the insurers
to add value when you decide to use these modalities
and they supported you? What if the insurance ‘payor’
function left the precision of personalized practice and
TODAY ’ S P R A C T I C E: C H A N G I N G T H E B US I NES S OF M EDI C I NE