Healing Our (many) Healthcare Grievances - One Entrepreneur at a Time

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), chronic diseases account for 90% of healthcare costs, morbidity, and mortality. Those healthcare costs total a number close to $4 trillion - that's $4,000,000,000,000 to put it in perspective. ??????

?On average, residents of the United States?with five or more chronic conditions spend 14 times more on health services than people with no chronic conditions.?

Unfortunately, standard healthcare services fail to sufficiently serve our growing concerns for chronic disease in America. Most of the efforts in today’s healthcare are on disease management + medication management which continue to promote mediocre patient outcomes while rising costs continue to pressure both the consumer and their employers.

This broken record has been playing for far too long and most of us are exhaustively tired of hearing this while we observe an absurd elevation in profits for a handful of multinational corporations monopolizing the marketplace within our broken healthcare design now tailor-made for pharmaceuticals and specialists as we drown in sick-care systems under the guise of “health” care services.?

If you're reading this, it's likely you are hungry for change.

Most of us are.

There is much change to be made. That is for sure. So let's dive in...

Connecting the Dots for Better Care

A major impediment to health improvement is low health literacy. The de facto intervention perpetuating this problem is a prescription for symptom management that requires little knowledge by the patient.?Deficits in health literacy are associated with poorer health outcomes and higher health-related costs for both individuals and systems. Improved health literacy has been associated with reductions in risk behaviors for chronic disease, and decreased rates of hospitalization.?

When we are able to help patients connect the dots we can make all the difference.

"The greatest medicine of all is teaching people how not to need it." - Hippocrates

Our hope as those who practice medicine is to help our patients and community members depend on us less. When we actively seek to connect upstream actions to downstream results, we are growing health outside the hospital and far beyond the waiting room. Our care to patients needs to extend the compressed practice of medicine today that resembles something like an assembly line to promote options for drugs to manage symptoms without anytime to explore the root cause. If we do not teach our patients how to be well, then we are not doctors at all [Latin verb: docere, or to teach] full stop. ??

In future editions of this newsletter, we'll be discussing the role of health coaches in the healthcare environment and the vital role they play to support real, lasting behavioral change when doctors don't yet have the systems in place to be the teachers they once were. At the end of the day, practicing medicine without education is not medicine at all, but rather a sad storyline filled with pain and broken promises marked by many years of patient dependence on band-aid after band-aid without ever getting well.

Unintentional Consequences of Poor Design

Many times our assumed innovations in healthcare have led to a grave multitude of unintentional consequences.?"We have added electronic health records (EHRs) in offices and hospitals that make verbal communication even more obsolete." J. Michael Connors MD ?? He goes on to say in his recent newsletter, "The key lesson from our current healthcare communication landscape is evident: Effective communication, meaningful relationships, and authentic connections are crucial in delivering superior healthcare."

This is just one of countless grievances we have with Healthcare today. Is it not? Feel free to add in your own personal favorite grievances in the comments below.??

Our healthcare is fractured, fragmented and feels like a freight train moving too fast and with too much momentum to stop or change direction. It's out of control and we all know it.

When I've spoken with chief clinical operation officers, they tell me the same thing. The machine is too big to change gently. What we need is a massive overhaul, a dramatic shift in the marketplace if we expect real change to be really accessible and affordable like we all long for.

Leaders, Healers, Innovators, and Entrepreneurs Fixing Our Broken Healthcare

As Shobha Dasari writes in her book, Hacking Healthcare, the opportunities are endless for human-centric design improvements across all of healthcare. From the use of computers in patient consultation rooms to EHRs to poorly designed EpiPens, insulin injection pens, to the legitimately concerning cold and static architectural design of most health clinics and hospitals today. She and Diva Sharma are working together to unlock personal lifestyle data to treat chronic disease over Flair Health ??

Take a few lessons from principles of biophilic design to redesign hospitals as naturally health promoting environments, then maybe we could actually move the needle. We have leaders like Melissa Sundermann, DO, DipABLM, FACLM & Robyn Tiger MD, DipABLM cheerleading us to all go outdoors more and I'm sure many of us have read the impressive research behind ill patients who have access to windows or kids who have greater access to green space in urban dwelling places. ??

These insights are nothing new. We've known what factors of our lives can positively contribute to good health for dozens of decades. The problem is we don't often take the time to be intentional with our design. Our current systems sprint towards pushing the MVP to market as soon as possible in order to capitalize on market share and maximize profit margins. ??

We don't consider designing beautiful hospital space to optimize patient wellbeing. No, we feed them junk foods and soda during their stay courtesy of Big Food contracts, isolate them from the natural world, leave their feet cold dangling at the end of their beds, and let them listen to the endless chirps of sterilized medical equipment nearby.

How revolutionary would it be to consider patient rooms with windows, natural greenery, and the chance to simply listen to the birds sing outside. What we need is a reWILDing in health and healthcare. ??

We need better pipelines for prevention as well. Thankfully, we have had recent growth with the help of Lifestyle Medicine American College of Lifestyle Medicine working with large institutions and medical centers to advance real and authentic health and healing from a healthy foundation of Lifestyle Medicine, which quality sleep, nutrition, physical activity, healthy relationships, substance avoidance, stress management, and the suggested 7th pillar to include time in nature. All of these health behaviors can act as powerful steps in both prevention and treatment of disease. ?? Beth Frates, MD Padmaja Patel, MD, FACLM, DipABLM Susan Benigas

Premise Health and others continue to bring lifestyle medicine based clinics to some of the largest companies and their employees across the nation. ?? Stu Clark Beth Ratliff

In recent months, I've also grown to be more of a fan of those in the marketplace bridging the gap for niche offerings of care in the great span of health conditions in need of additional TLC after being let down by standard care.

Pomelo Care is transforming outcomes for moms and babies through personalized, accessible, evidence-based virtual care. Like most of us reading this newsletter, they believe "every pregnant person and newborn should receive high quality, accessible and personalized care." I tend to agree. ?? Marta Bralic Kerns

To their credit, my friends over at Parsley Health ?? have rooted themselves in real transformative healthcare for those in need, leveraging the best of functional, integrative, and lifestyle medicine to support their patients. They take aim at improving quality care strategies while reducing costs and going direct to consumers. Now In-Network for 10M patients in NY & CA. They have led the way to provide medical care designed to help complex patients live healthier, longer while reducing total cost of care. ?? Robin Berzin MD

My latest find has been AndHealth focused on radically improving access + outcomes for specialty care. They are striving to be the leading digital health solution for autoimmune diseases and migraine. Like I said, this is the era of niche offers in the marketplace. Employers use AndHealth's disease reversal programs to unlock employee engagement and productivity while reducing healthcare costs. ?? Matt Scantland Tom Blue

And the last share I have for today is one that hits close to home.

You see, I got into my career exploring food as medicine, nutrition & dietetics because my mom has Crohn's Disease and she has had it ever since she was a kid. It's a challenging condition to live with. It has also been historically neglected from a lifestyle and nutrition standpoint in standard care. Surgeries and immunosuppressant drugs were nearly the only options presented to patients in the past.

Enter Romanwell , a company I've been following since it's beginning specializing in inflammatory bowel disorders (IBD) like Crohn's and colitis. They function as a nutrition telehealth practice matching highly-qualified IBD dietitians to people with Crohn's and colitis throughout the US. ?? Joe Rogers, PhD Brittany Rogers, MS, RDN Their mission is to ensure that everyone with Crohn's and colitis has access to the high-quality, evidence-based care they deserve. Again, I tend to agree with the aims for "highest quality care that patients deserve..." across the board. That's what we're all after.

In our current chaos of practicing physicians compromised & chained to medication management technicians with endless scripts memorized for drugs and pharmaceuticals and seemingly endless referrals to specialists upon specialists it can feel frustrating and hopeless for patients and their family members. This brief spotlight I've written for us today can hopefully help shine some light for us to hold on to hope and strive for what we know to be better health & better healthcare in this country. ??

Some of us take our grievances with us to bed, some of us take them to the grave. Others like I've included here chew on these grievances and can't seem to let them go. They've weaponized their indignation to mold it into inspiration to build and to lead, to innovate and create something better in the world around them for all of us to benefit from.

So, when the tunnel can feel dark and infuriating when you're thinking and speaking about health + healthcare in this country, remember this and use that fire to glean valuable insights, garner attention, and gather a team of like-minded, growth-focused, entrepreneurial spirits to build something to fix the problems you see.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

ZigZag Nutrition represents the pursuit we share as we strive to live this life as best as we can, learning and growing, flexing and adapting along the way to better align ourselves to the most nutritious life and lifestyle that meets our needs and nourishes our body, mind, and spirit - together.

I’m only here to help, trying to do what I can to make the world a better place... little by little... all of our collective actions can make a massive change.

Thank you for being here. Please consider sharing this story with a friend or use it as a catalyst for conversation. See you next time! ??

You can always find more of my writing at https://jonathanisbillrd.substack.com?

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