CHW Healthcare Blog

Falling through the Cracks

A physician in Pennsylvania opens a free health clinic for those living without health insurance.

She notes:

"The day-to-day time that I spent on paperwork was increasing, while my patients weren't getting the good care that I wanted to give them -- face-to-face time, one-on-one time," Dr. Lorna Stuart recalls. "I vowed to do whatever little I could about this inequity of care."

Indeed there are many inequities in the current U.S. health system.  We believe that if we can all come together we can create a healthcare system that prizes quality and compassion above all.

If we can harness all our voices, bringing together disparate points of view, who knows what we can accomplish?

Tell us what you expect from a compassionate system by adding a comment to this post or emailing us.

Compassion in Mental Health

A reader suggests adding a new subject to our ongoing conversation - that of compassion in mental health:

"The nature of the affliction directly affects the sufferer's mind. If the mind is the universal ordering principle, these folks are vulnerable in a very unique way.

The essence of compassion is: we are the same, there is no meaningful difference, our joys and sufferings are shared.

Mental health patients and everyone else are therefore the same. There's a beauty in that perspective."

Indeed.  What has your experience been?  Is there equity in the way mental health and physical health are treated?  How would a compassionate society meet these needs?

You can also suggest a topic that's of interest to you, by clicking here.

Compassion - Heroic or Mundane?

An anthropolist's take on compassion in health care, here.

In his interviews on the subject he notes:

"...compassion was commonly understood as an everyday thing—not requiring drama or large effort but consisting of small acts. Over and over, when people described compassion in others, they referred not to monumental actions or events in people's lives, but to small behaviors: ways of listening and supporting others that were hard to describe because of their seeming ordinariness. At the same time, while recruiting participants for the study, I was regularly told, "Why do you want to talk to me? I'm not a compassionate person."

This suggests a conflict between compassion conceptualized as a heroic phenomenon and compassion experienced in the mundane."

Health Tradeoffs

CHW's research has shown that one in four U.S. adults (about 76 million people) are choosing between paying for health care or basic necessities like food and rent. Our research also shows that those living without insurance are having to make these decisions in far greater numbers (28 million uninsured, compared to about 8 million with insurance).

Now, a new study shows that Medicare recipients have only a limited understanding of the benefits available to them, and that many are deciding not to take their medications in response to high costs.

Adequate and ongoing education, coupled with access to affordable health care services are clearly needed. We believe that access to quality health care is a fundamental human right. Together we can see this become a reality. 

We're interested in learning about your experience navigating the health care system -- what's working well in your community?  What isn't?

Start the conversation by adding a comment to this post.

Happy Earth Day

CHW has been a longtime advocate for environmental responsibility.

A look at our work can be found here.

In honor of Earth Day, a series of satellite images of the Earth.  More here.

Treading Lightly on the Planet

Can a health care company find ways to tread more lightly on the planet?

Why shouldn't hospitals be doing their part to protect the environment?  We think they should.  That's why we're implementing changes across our family of hospitals that reduce energy consumption and waste without sacrificing patient care.  It's clear that a healthier planet makes for healthier people, and that's our foremost goal, so we'll keep looking for ways to do more when it comes to wasting less.

To contribute your own thoughts on how we can collectively put our best foot forward where health care is concerned, add a comment to this post.

Living Compassion

The Dalai Lama talks about compassion in health care.  More here.

His message:

"One time in Japan, a doctor asked me about trust between patients and doctors," he said. "Trust is very important. Then he asked me how to develop trust. I don't know. But the key thing is the doctor's sense of concern. His sense of commitment, his sense of responsibility with affection. Genuine affection for the patient. That is the basis of trust." Trust, he noted, needs to be mixed with compassion.

National Health Decisions Day

From our medical ethicist:

Today is the day you should do what you keep telling yourself you will do - make an Advance Directive, which will designate someone who knows you well and cares about you to make health care decisions for you if you ever become unable to do it for yourself.  After the Terri Schiavo case, there was a little bump up in the number of people who filled out an Advance Directive, but then the momentum was lost.  But TODAY you can join folks all across the country and get it done.

Think about who might be the best person to advocate for your wishes (here's a hint: it might or might not be your spouse.  You want someone who can be strong and do what YOU would do if you could). You will of course want to talk to the person you designate to be sure the person accepts the responsibility. After that, you can make copies for your family and your doctor. Copies are every bit as good as the original.  Your doctor will put it right into your chart and will probably be very grateful. You can also mail it in to your doctor's office and then check to be sure it's in your file the next time you go in for an appointment. The original one should stay in an easy-to-find location in your house - with your passport, your checkbook or other important papers.  Don't put it in a safety deposit box -- if you need it you want it to be easy to find.

So fire up your printer and print the form...and email one to your parents if they don't already have them, and one to your sibling(s) and your friends and, well, you get the idea.

Brain: Shouldn't we use it to lower health costs?

Every day, the world of medicine makes advances in healing the sick. But what good are those breakthroughs if people can't afford to take advantage of them?  At CHW, we're making steps in the right direction: we offer one of the country's most generous financial assistance policies, and we subsidize free clinics. We also work to head off illness through innovative outreach programs on preventive care. We believe everyone has a right to health care. Today, that's just an idea. If we put our heads together, it could become a reality. 

Let's share our best thinking. Start by adding your comment to this post.

Let's begin with compassion

Access to health care is as essential to social well being as food and shelter. Numerous studies, including our own, show that most everyone in the U.S. agrees that access to quality health care is a fundamental human right. 

As a nation, we understand that health care is essentially an act of compassion.  And as members of a compassionate society we want everyone to have access to the care they need regardless of their ability to pay for that care.

And we're not alone.  Scotland, for example, recently launched a Leadership in Compassionate Care project.

The purpose of this blog is to bring many voices together to make the nation's health care system better.  To do that, we believe that the conversation must begin and end with compassion. 

So let's start a new kind of conversation about health care. In a compassionate health care system, what role does the individual play? What about hospitals? Insurance companies?  The government?

Add a comment to share your thoughts.