A Ukrainian Refugee's Perspective on US Healthcare and Its Embrace of Innovations - Intro Post

I’ve been developing software for the healthcare industry for the past years, mostly for the US market. And you know what? I didn’t know much about it and apparently, I couldn’t really know before I actually experienced it myself.?

It’s been a bit over 3 months since I came to the US and unfortunately for my family, friends, and myself, over this time, I had to experience it way more times than I wanted to… Regular appointments, labs, ER, ICU, Urgent Care… In other words, a lot of time was spent ‘learning’ how the healthcare system works, not how I usually prefer my studying.?

However, I’d like to share some thoughts on some of my findings. Please note, that all my thoughts are very subjective, I perfectly understand that everything differs from hospital to hospital, from state to state, from insurance coverage, and lots of other factors. No intention to offend anyone or make healthcare professionals look bad. I appreciate every single person who decided to dedicate their life to this complicated and stressful profession all over the world.?

But I think it’s important to talk about some of the problems since conversation is the first step to improving something. By the way, lots of things will be compared to how things work in my lovely Ukraine, even during wartime.?

Let’s start with something good. Hospitals in the US look much better than Ukrainian ones for sure!:) And yes, I’ve been to all kinds of hospitals here, beginning with a really small clinic with just a few rooms to huge hospitals with multiple buildings and floors. So in terms of overall conditions, medical equipment, parking, and many other aspects, the hospitals look great and modern. I mean, there are a few private hospitals in Ukraine, primarily in large cities that are also modern and nice, but those are exceptions. Most hospitals are still old Soviet buildings which even after renovation still look bad and some are just terrifying.?

In December of 2021, before the full invasion, our BeKey soccer team played the finals in a local IT league where everyone had a happy ending (we became champions) but me - I tore my ACL just 7 seconds till the final whistle (facepalm). My partner Evgeniy Berkovich from Israel was visiting Ukraine at that time and of course, came to cheer for us in the final game. He was the one who took me to the ER in our local hospital - the biggest ER in a 2 million city. According to him, he still wakes up sweating once in a while at home when he sees that hospital in his dreams. And I understand why, it’s really bad - you can actually use it for horror movies. The equipment looks the same age as the building itself - so ancient. For X-rays, you still wait until they print the image and you take it yourself to the doctor on a different floor (in my case using the wheelchair that barely fit the elevator). 2023, right??

Luckily for the US that’s definitely not the case, everything is super modern, and lots of innovations are used on a regular basis unlike Ukraine when only fancy and pricy private clinics might have some of them.?

The cover of this post is the photo of the recently opened Jefferson Washington Township Hospital in NJ. This time I was actually there for an event so didn’t see much besides the lobby and the conference hall but I was impressed. Most Ukrainians would think this is a brand new super innovative business center but a hospital? Really? It was kind of weird to see lots of people for the event in business suits walking in together with regular patients who came to see a doctor.?

If you’d like to find out more about what I found and actually why for such a short period of time I spent so much time in the US hospitals, subscribe to this newsletter, and let’s discuss why, when, and how we can try to improve the US healthcare system.

Spoiler alert - lots of observations aren’t as optimistic as this first post :(