A Patient, by Any Other Name, Is Still a Human Being

This week, Dr. Rich (About.com's Guide to Heart Disease) and I addressed a group of healthcare payers. Among them were private health insurance payers, and representatives from Medicare and Medicaid organizations.

Dr. Rich and I collaborated on ideas to help payers, providers and patients work together to improve care and to suggest possible improvements to the payment systems currently in place that would be based on cooperation among the three.

Dr. Rich's approach was to help payers understand the concept of rationing care, meaning, how payers interfere with the relationship between doctors and patients by paying only for some diagnostic and treatment choices and not for others. (By the way -- that's my word -- "interfere" -- but I'm not sure Dr. Rich would use that same word.)

My role was to humanize the conversation, to share the thoughts and words of patients who have written or spoken to me, and to provide a patient wish list that might improve the system for all three -- patients, providers and payers.

Prior to our talk, we had the opportunity to listen to a handful of other speakers, all but one of whom came from the ranks of those payers. I learned a great deal about what goes on behind the scenes, as payers try to figure out ways to reduce the cost of managing our healthcare.

I was pleased to see that all the ideas discussed were a combination of improving our health in coordination with reducing those costs. The more cynical side of me might have expected that not to be true -- I hear so frequently from patients about what their payer WON'T allow them coverage for, that it was refreshing to hear some of the pro-care approaches they have worked on, like disease management.

But one observation was a bit jarring to me, and quite an eye opener. Eight speakers preceded me at the microphone, yet I had heard the term "patients" used only one time. Instead of "patients," I heard us referred to as customers, consumers, "lives," insureds, demographics, even numbers. To me, each of those words is used to de-humanize what healthcare is really all about -- individual patients.

So I decided to point that out as I began my talk. And by their reaction, I believe it jarred at least a few folks in the audience, too. I'm quite sure none had ever thought about it. And I'm afraid there were more than a few that didn't much care.

I hope now that Dr. Rich and I have shared our ideas, the people in attendance will begin thinking of us more frequently as individual patients who need to understand more about the healthcare system in order to use it wisely and effectively. Yes -- we most certainly fit all those other labels, but....

First and foremost we are patients who want and deserve to be healthy, and who want and deserve a system that focuses on human well being.
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