Vivian Lee: Solving America's Health Care Crisis

According to Dr. Vivian Lee, health care is killing our economy and, in many cases, killing us.

Beyond the outrageous expense, the quality of care varies wildly, and millions of Americans can’t get care when they need it. This is bad for patients, bad for doctors, and bad for business.

Dr. Lee cuts to the heart of the health-care crisis and offers a blueprint that is both realistic and optimistic. She warns it may not be a quick fix, but she says her concrete action plan for reform―for employers and other payers, patients, clinicians, and policy makers―can reinvent health care, and create a less costly, more efficient, and healthier system for all.

NOTES
Photo by Aaron Wolf

This program is generously supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and a collaborative of local funders and donors. We are grateful for their support and hope others will follow their example to support the Club during these uncertain times.

Speakers:
Vivian Lee
M.D., President, Health Platforms, Verily; Author, The Long Fix: Solving America’s Health Care Crisis with Strategies that Work for Everyone; Twitter @vivianleemd

In Conversation with Mark Zitter
Chair, The Zetema Project; Member, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors; Twitter @markzitter

[cherylcarlson]

Don't hear anything about working with nurses to improve care. Current trend is medical assistants who are totally unprepared to advocate for patients. Only nurses are able to understand disparate symptoms are all important when seen as disease processes to go beyond BP machine and palpate a pulse to get a busy patient scheduled when they will actually show, not the next available slot.
Nurses are the ones to educate a pt to develop a relationship with pharmacist and PCP even if at first they are grouchy about it. Pt satisfaction goes up when they can almost always get in for UTI and be in and out in 15 min because they truly understand this is one thing visit, when they can trust the nurse with deepest concern and know they are heard and solutions are worked to their benefit. When a PCP has 2K pts they don't listen, they barely look at the pt, but they consistently miss their best care partner. I tried for 5 yrs to get a big clinic system to do "once in a blue moon care" where weekend care was done around colonoscopies, WWE with the mammograms to capture those who have difficulty getting off work to do preps and have visits consequently skipping care for years. I think the first time would be booked with MD's who just can't get themselves worked into schedules around working! Nurses were servants in the 60's, coworkers in the 80's and around 2000 started to be seen as physician extenders (NP). I never wanted to be soybean for healthcare and saw that time with patients, at the bedside could increase compliance, explaining things in nonmedical terms could make aero space engineer understand as well as the scared teen mom. Knowing the sociology of medicine and putting it into action is so cool, almost as good as confounding the Epic red shirts. You only touched on Direct Service Practice, not mentioning it is widespread and does an elegant workaround of insurance companies.