SIMPLIFY

I want to SIMPLIFY the complexity. That is where I serve best – a unique way of adding value is to take something that seems so complicated it feels IMPOSSIBLE and make it tangible, doable, repeatable. I wrote before a simple special character changes the IMPOSSIBLE to I’M POSSIBLE.

A year ago I had a SIMPLE post noting how DynaMed has made the complicated effort determining what evidence and guidance is trustworthy SIMPLE for clinicians and policy-makers.

I started this week with KNOCKING triggered by a Knock, Knock joke that caught my attention but really to reflect on “When OPPORTUNITY knocks…”  But then I took the OPPORTUNITY of a historically atypical week to comment on our political changes (INDEPENDENCE, TRUMP, TIME FOR CHANGE).

We could hear one side promoting all the benefits of the “Affordable Care Act” and the alternative side promote the need to “repeal and replace Obamacare”.  What if we could SIMPLIFY the problem and solution by focusing on WHAT MATTERS?

Can we SIMPLIFY what we define as health care, what care we want the health care system to provide for us?

Can we SIMPLIFY what we define as health care service, what service we are paying for and expecting to receive when we use the health care system?

Can we SIMPLIFY how we value health care service, applying “what we pay” to “what we want” instead of complex systems that take an industry to implement (in addition to the health care service and the insurance industries)

Can we SIMPLIFY how we recognize a “good deal” or a “fair deal” in health care services?

Can we SIMPLIFY how the patient (or consumer or client as we often describe health care in business terms) recognizes their options, what is known about them individually (personalized care), what is known from the global community (evidence-based care), and how their needs, values and preferences are considered (shared decision-making)?

Can we SIMPLIFY how health care providers are rated for “quality” or “performance” to focus on WHAT MATTERS and not go beyond that? (Even well-meaning efforts to focus on what might matter can have a paradoxical effect of shifting our attention away from what does matter.)

Can we SIMPLIFY our policy-making so decisions governing such important developments are not beholden to, overridden by, or run amok by special interests getting their “piece of the pie” and killing our system with death by a thousand cuts?

SIMPLIFYING is not SIMPLE to do, but once done it is so much better. I believe we can SIMPLIFY all these things to “make American health care great again” – now if we could only SIMPLIFY the methods for public discourse to have such a dialog.