INSIGHTS

Curing What Ails Healthcare

Hospice and Palliative Care Blaze a Path for Needed Changes:

We’ve all heard the old healthcare adage: “The cure is worse than the disease.”

Medical education trains physicians to fight disease. Generally, that means treating the symptom that the patient is experiencing. And then the next one. And then the one after that.

How much say does the patient have in the treatment plan? Too often, very little, if anything at all.

That’s a real problem, according to Dr. Timothy Ihrig, an internationally recognized authority on palliative care who joined Crossroads Hospice & Palliative Care (a SPRYTE Communications client) as Chief Medical Officer earlier this year.

Dr. Ihrig believes patients deserve to be fully informed of their condition, what it entails, the likely prognosis, and the likely trajectory of the disease. And that  patients should be involved in important decisions that can affect their quality of life.

“True palliative care” offers an important, proactive, inclusive way of addressing individual patient needs and wishes, while at the same time serving as a key driver in the effort to reduce healthcare costs.

In his blog, What’s Wrong with Healthcare? It Doesn’t Care (Part I), Dr. Ihrig begins to map out how that perspective underscores his desire to “start a movement of thought and inspire others to seek not healthcare reform but a reforming of how we care for others within the healthcare system.”

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