Rx for Today’s Broken Healthcare System

Can Radical Creativity Offer Solutions? This Author Believes So

Prior to the journalistic career I’m currently immersed in, my early years were spent in healthcare. I worked with three leadership teams over the span of about 12 years and have a Master of Health Services Administration. My experiences encompassed  a variety of settings — a university teaching hospital, rural hospital, urban hospital, and a community health center for low income patients. 

Now 14 years removed from my last position in the field, I am struck and troubled by the core problems that continue to beset our healthcare system in America. As we know, hospitals and medical centers stand as critical pillars of healthcare, providing essential services to millions of individuals. However, these institutions are currently grappling with a complex trifecta of challenges tied to quality of care, escalating costs, and equitable access to healthcare services.

Quality of Care

Maintaining and improving the quality of care in hospitals is an ongoing battle. The pursuit of cutting-edge medical treatments, advanced technologies, and evidence-based practices demands constant adaptation. It’s here where hospitals are faced with the challenge of keeping pace with medical advancements while ensuring that patient safety, effective treatment, and positive outcomes remain at the forefront. In the end the ability to strike  a balance between innovation and adherence to rigorous quality standards is a daunting task. 

Escalating Costs

The financial strain on hospitals is an issue of growing concern. Rising operational costs, expensive medical equipment, and staffing challenges contribute to the escalating financial burden. Additionally, the transition to electronic health records and compliance with stringent regulations require substantial investments. The delicate balancing act of delivering top-notch care while controlling costs places hospital administrators and healthcare providers in a precarious position.

Equitable Access

Access to healthcare remains an enduring challenge, with disparities in healthcare access and outcomes affecting vulnerable populations disproportionately. The lack of health insurance, geographic barriers, and socio-economic factors often create barriers to entry, leaving many individuals without the timely care they need. Ensuring equitable access to medical services across all demographics demands innovative solutions that bridge gaps and prioritize inclusivity.

These challenges in my view are all intricately interconnected. For instance, efforts to improve quality may lead to increased costs due to the adoption of advanced technologies and specialized staff training. Conversely, cost-saving measures may inadvertently impact the quality of care. Additionally, the uneven distribution of resources can directly influence access, creating a cycle that exacerbates disparities.

The challenges facing American hospitals – maintaining quality, managing costs, and ensuring equitable access – are a formidable triad that demand thoughtful strategies and collaborative efforts. By embracing innovation, harnessing data-driven insights, and fostering partnerships, hospitals can navigate these challenges and continue to be beacons of healthcare excellence, serving all members of society while striving for a healthier, more equitable future.

Artists Remaking Medicine: The Practice of Imagination and the Power to Create a Better Healthcare Future is a promising new book offering fresh perspectives around the prevailing issues  currently impacting the healthcare field. Scheduled for release in September of 2023, this powerful anthology on the intersection of art and medicine, takes readers on a deep dive into the history, practice, and future of radical creativity in healthcare.

Written by Emily F. Peters in collaboration with 25 artist changemakers, this book acknowledges the powerful impact that medicine can have while challenging its broken and inefficient structures.

Among the book’s highlights:

• The story of Yoko and Avery Sen who reimagine a new narrative for healthcare by turning a traumatic hospitalization story into a project for enhancing the sound of bedside alarms for millions of clinicians and patients around the world. 

• The efforts of architects of MASS Design Group to build dignity into hospitals. 

• Thought-leadership from bestselling physician writer Sandeep Jauhar on medicine's long memory

•  A former ICU nurse and her use of medical ephemera in fine art

Says Peters in the book’s introduction:

“The artists in this book show how that complexity,which can feel paralyzing, can also be fuel for creativity in medicine. To me, there is no one better than an artist to truthfully observe healthcare, the stories of life-saving inventions, of centuries-old professional culture, of burnout and moral fatigue, of harm - and then to use it all as material to create something vibrantly new and change our thinking.”

Artistic creativity, she believes is the secret weapon for building a "new vision of the future" for healthcare — one that’s infinitely more joyful, truthful, affordable, effective and healing for both professionals and patients.

She adds: 

“Artists shake us awake, they help us focus. Artists help us to love medicine for what it is, to be curious about how we got here, and to challenge everyone involved to a more vivid moral imagination.”

She says that she’s been working in healthcare marketing for a long time noting….

“…. I got my start as a sports journalist originally and then I worked for a couple of Fintech startups  before getting  involved with some digital health startups.”

Peters adds that we all need to have our eyes continually open to all of the massive, systemic problems that are currently facing the healthcare sector, noting that “there are are  an endless array of problems that need to be addressed.” 

She says the strain on the system can really burn you out and make you feel hopeless adding…

“Everyone working in healthcare feels pretty hopeless sometimes about how to make it better.”

She recounts her own health crisis in 2016 where she woke up in the ICU as a sobering, first-hand experience.  

“As a patient, seeing it from that side made me want to want to do more to try to create change in our sector. That’s what really sparked the first book. And then this second book is such an expansion on this in that it is really looking at ways in which we can foster not only tactical changes in the healthcare space but also make some shifts culturally in imagining a better healthcare future. All of this is about having hope and being able to continue to fight.” 

Peters believes that we spend so much time in healthcare pointing figures and saying……  “ well you know these costs are expensive but it’s really the payors; or it’s really the insurers. And then the insurers are like it’s the physicians who are doing this. And then it's really about the patients who are demanding all of this. We are really just spinning our wheels.”

And so the book, says Peters, is a call to action to….

…..“do the hard work of being an optimist, of thinking about the future, of just asking and starting to demand what we want to change. This is true if you are a physician, if you are a nurse, if you are an administrator, if you are an artist, or a patient. It’s really all of  us getting together and saying that enough is enough. 

She concludes

“I believe artists can lead the way in teaching us how to build a better future for healthcare by increasing our capacity to imagine and create what that could be. This new book I believe can help us get there.” 

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