> I think it would be much better for both patients and healthcare staff alike if there was a greater emphasis placed on focusing on the series of successes and failures that happen over the course of someone's care, not just seeing it as a single shift or a single problem happening in some isolated point in time.
I once had a week as a patient at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale AZ. There were many remarkable aspects of care there versus the impossible mess out here in the other world.
But the single most significant aspect of care at Mayo Clinic is that the doctors and nurses and techs get to read your chart before seeing you.
That's it. You write something in the chart, it doesn't get tossed. It might not get parsed completely, but the essential info is there. And the staff does not get penalized for reading it.
(The other big reveal for me at Mayo was the sheer scale and throughput of the system. Healthcare at Mayo did not cost more than healthcare in my small town. It. Cost. The. Same.
It took six months to get in, I had a week, then it was someone else's turn. I presume that the high paying "celebrity" customers can get seen more regularly. So it's not perfect. But holy cow I wish it were easier for healthcare professionals to do their job.)
In general for US healthcare providers there is little relationship between price and quality. They have to meet certain quality standards in order to operate at all, but outsides few limited areas they don't get paid more for delivering higher quality care. So quality (or lack thereof) tends to come down to organizational culture and management.
For someone that hasn’t heard of they Mayo Clinic other than through webite articles describing medical conditions, are they that desired/high-quality?
I'm not sure if you live in the United States, but Mayo Clinic is probably a top 5 hospital system in the US. It is legendary. Just read the opening paragraph from Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayo_Clinic
The Mayo Clinic (/ˈmeɪjoʊ/) is a nonprofit American academic medical center focused on integrated health care, education, and research.[6] It employs over 4,500 physicians and scientists, along with another 58,400 administrative and allied health staff, across three major campuses: Rochester, Minnesota; Jacksonville, Florida; and Phoenix/Scottsdale, Arizona.[7][8] The practice specializes in treating difficult cases through tertiary care and destination medicine. It is home to the top-15 ranked Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine in addition to many of the highest regarded residency education programs in the United States.[9][10][11] It spends over $660 million a year on research and has more than 3,000 full-time research personnel.[12][13]
A little deeper:
Mayo Clinic has ranked number one in the United States for seven consecutive years in U.S. News & World Report's Best Hospitals Honor Roll,[19] maintaining a position at or near the top for more than 35 years.
IIRC, the Mayo Clinic invented the medical checklist. Like, people actually read the checklist and make sure that they tick off all the boxes they are required to tick off.
That's why they are number one. Because they actually use checklists.
My wife was diagnosed Devic's disease, a rare disease with a grim prognosis. Almost every paper we could find on it had the name of a doctor that worked at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale. We lived in Arizona at the time so we went there and found that doctor. He corrected her diagnosis as MS, not Devic's. They both suck but Devic's is much worse. We paid out of pocket and getting the correct diagnosis was worth every penny.
I once had a week as a patient at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale AZ. There were many remarkable aspects of care there versus the impossible mess out here in the other world.
But the single most significant aspect of care at Mayo Clinic is that the doctors and nurses and techs get to read your chart before seeing you.
That's it. You write something in the chart, it doesn't get tossed. It might not get parsed completely, but the essential info is there. And the staff does not get penalized for reading it.
(The other big reveal for me at Mayo was the sheer scale and throughput of the system. Healthcare at Mayo did not cost more than healthcare in my small town. It. Cost. The. Same.
It took six months to get in, I had a week, then it was someone else's turn. I presume that the high paying "celebrity" customers can get seen more regularly. So it's not perfect. But holy cow I wish it were easier for healthcare professionals to do their job.)