The problem in healthcare is not a lack of care. The problem in healthcare is a lack of health.
I have not met anyone who truly doesn't care. The closest you get on the ground is people who are overwhelmed.
People tend to believe that the overwhelm, frustration, and apparent lack of care is because of the processes of healthcare. No! Even if you fix all the processes, you will still see the flourishing of disease. The core problem is not process. The core problem is knowledge. We don't know what health is, so our models are incomplete.
People want to solve operational problems in healthcare because it's much easier to have an understanding of them and get support for them (albeit limited support!). And don't get me wrong, they are important problems to solve. But it's more difficult, more fundamental, and certainly more dangerous to articulate and propagate the informational problem.
Solving the informational problem would compel change at the most fundamental levels of healthcare and public health. Hence, few talk about it.
Inquire into health. Research health. Discover health. Then operationalize that knowledge as a care system. Until then, we are systematizing ignorance and disease.
The amazing thing is that even with systematized ignorance, we can help people, and we do! That is the wonder and power of us human beings, of our depth and capacity to deliver beauty and healing even in the midst of error.
Imagine what we could do if we corrected the error.
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