The Writing is on Healthcare’s Wall—Dude!

Tonight, I reconnected with an old friend — a trailblazer in the industry of healthcare that both men and women aspire to be. Years ago, we met by shear chance. One Tweet led to the next, collegial banter ensued, we realized we had a mutual friend at the same conference (BK), and then — Dude! (which ironically later became the subject thread of an email).

She always enjoyed my progressive writing style (or perhaps it was the cuss words), and it was one of the first things she asked about tonight — so here we are.

It had been years since we talked. Since then, she’s sold her company for bank and she could have walked away from the healthcare industry knowing she had done a lifetime’s worth of good. But instead, she took a different approach. She applied for a job at a large box store, took a drug test and a questionnaire, and was hired as a cashier. To many, that will seem odd — or even stupid. To me, that’s just who she is — a problem solver, a doer, a thinker, a tinkerer, all in this tiny little powerhouse frame. And compassionate as f*ck about patient-consumers — about people from all walks of life.

Which, like most things in a reformed healthcare wonk turned stay-at-home dad superhero’s life, got me thinking.

What is your healthcare career journey?

We all certainly have one to share.

For most of us, we likely joined the industry by chance — it was a job and you had a skillset. For others, it was a career choice — a physician, a PA, a nurse, a CNA, etc. For others, it’s a lifelong passion — a never-ending quest to improve an industry so that the next generation doesn’t face the same perils that we do today.

Tonight, I was reminded in part about my journey — as, ironically, I have been several times this week, and its only Wednesday.

To challenge the status-quo.

It was a physician-executive running for political office nearly 22 years ago that taught me that.

Political candidate?

Yes.

Interestingly, my journey in healthcare started in politics. But not as you would think. I wasn’t a policy junkie. Nor a data cruncher. Nor a lobbyist. Nor anything else you could think of that crosses the bridge between the two.

I was a programmer. A fresh college graduate with unquenchable dreams to build sh*t.

Nothing at all to do with healthcare.

Everything to do with my passion for public administration and its various functions. Although I did stray from that once when LeAnn Rimes was a client (no, seriously).

Like I said, I had an interesting journey.

But it was that physician that saw more — not just in my technology, but in me as a person. Me in how I treated other people. Me in how I had an insatiable quest to learn more, do more, see more, become more.

He was a leader like we used to have in healthcare. And he changed the course of my career because I bought into his passion to make his community — our community — a better place to live and live healthier.

So, my journey in healthcare was ultimately two-part: 1) I had a skillset that applied to it, and 2) I developed a passion to change the ever-living f*ck out of it because from my process-driven brain, all I saw were pitfalls and roadblocks.

But that created two paths for my journey over time, as you rarely get to do both in this industry. I was fortunate, though.

I played in two sandboxes — nicely. Alongside angels and archangels (see what I did there AD?) and alongside gatekeepers and rule benders.

Yet, I always battled internally with myself. On the one hand, I had to put food on the table for my wife and kids (thus skirting the line between doing good and doing slightly less good, if doing anything at all). And on the other hand, I wanted to follow lesser-paying alternatives that made far greater, tangible impacts across this vast industry (being one of our industry’s David’s among many Goliath’s that get little to no air time).

In the end, I chose the latter, and I was reminded of that tonight.

In the end, we have to realize that healthcare used to be led by the people that cared for those living in our communities, the physicians.

In the end, we have to remember that the very people responsible for understanding my symptoms and helping to make me feel better were the same ones running the business of healthcare.

In the end, we have to recall that we once had leaders with minds that were inquisitive, curious, and unafraid of investigating uncharted waters and new territories inside of our bodies and minds.

In the end, they all wanted to see beneath our skin, into our organs, our brains, and even draw a map of the very matter that makes us all uniquely human.

Our healthcare leaders used to be the people that lived in our neighborhoods, grew up with us, shopped at the same stores, broke bread at the same restaurants, went to Sunday services, and cheered our children on at sporting events. We had leaders that had empathy for the community — and most importantly, realized that patients were people.

That is the beginning and the end — the patient, the person.

And that is the healthcare we need to get back to — where the definition of healthcare is expanded to include life, because when life goes wrong, health goes wrong, and life happens outside the confines of healthcare delivery.

That’s the kind of mentality we need to scale.

Not infrastructure, or technology, or new buildings.

But love.

Compassion.

Caring.

Together as one.

Making healthcare great again, by tearing down the current wall that separates us from our patients—separates us from our communities—brick-by-brick.

Then we can fold in all the other stuff to advance it further.

The writing is on the wall, dude, we just have to be willing to see it.

Thanks for the reminder, AD. Safe travels, and talk to you again soon. The champagne is on me next time.

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