Health care vs. Sick care

“94% of failure comes from the system, not the individual.” - Dr. W. Edwards Deming

Here in the United States, we have a “health care” system. I fondly refer to itas a “sick care” system. Think about it. Most of us don’t even consider seeing a doctor until after we are sick. Our modern health care system more accurately deals with sickness than it does with health.

If we take a look at our health care system, we will notice that the United States spends more on health care than any other country in the world, and not by a small margin either.

Wouldn’t it stand to reason, then, that the United States should be the healthiest country?

Nope, not even close. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the United States, as of the writing of this report, was ranked #34! That’s crazy!

According to Dr. Deming’s logic, it isn’t the individuals who are the problem though. It is the system that is flawed.

Now please don’t get me wrong. I’m not condemning any of our amazing doctors, nurses, hospitals, and other great health care practitioners out there. In fact, I have many personal friends and patients who are emergency room physicians, family doctors, nurses, etc., and I think they are absolutely fantastic people!

But the system in which they operate is, well, broken.

Much of the system tends to waiting for symptoms to appear and then treat the symptoms rather than addressing the underlying cause(s) that produced the symptoms in the first place. 

I'll dive deeper into this on my next blog post. 

Author

David Cox, D.C. Dr. David Cox is Little Elm's Original Chiropractor! Passionately serving the area since 2001, he has been in Little Elm since it was a "one stop light town!"