occupy
Recently at the Planetree Annual Conference Planetree’s President Susan Frampton defined attendees as revolutionaries. It was a gathering of more than 1400 individuals highly engaged with changing our healthcare delivery system. But what does it mean to be a healthcare revolutionary?
Our country was birthed by a group of revolutionaries who had tired of the status quo and desired to change to way things operated. Similarly, in today’s U.S. healthcare system many people are tiring of the status quo. People are tiring of being uninsured and underinsured in the wealthiest nation on the planet. People are tiring of the third party payer system that disenfranchises those with health insurance from the conversation over cost and quality in healthcare. People are tiring of providers who don’t include them in decisions about their own bodies. People are tiring of a healthcare system that spends nearly twice as much as other nations yet has a lower average life expectancy.
Healthcare revolutionaries are rising up from coast to coast prepared to fight to change the way that healthcare is delivered in the U.S. Healthcare revolutionaries want a stronger focus on public health and prevention of illness and disease. They want patients to be included in the conversation not only of decisions that are made for their own bodies but for decisions that are made in healthcare organizations and government about how healthcare will be delivered. Healthcare revolutionaries want to see caregivers and providers engaged in the meaning and purpose that brought them into the caring professions.
To be a healthcare revolutionary means that you are willing to take up the fight to change a badly broken healthcare system that spends too much and cares too little. It means that you want to be part of the process of asking questions and coming up with innovative solutions that will reshape and rebuild the U.S. healthcare system into something that is worthy of caring for everyone not just those privileged enough to have health insurance.