Ideas of the Gesundheit! Vision of Health Care

Vision of a Hospital Based on Fun and Friendship

by Patch Adams

I entered medical school in 1967 to use medicine as a vehicle for social change. I used my free time to study the history of health care delivery around the world and to look at contemporary models with the idea of creating a medical model that would address all the problems of the way care is delivered. I didn't intend to create a model that would be the answer to the problems; but to model creative problem solving, and to spark each medical facility to design their own ideal rather than succumb to the garbage of managed care, or a resignation to the impossibility of humanistic care. Beginning in the climate of the political "war on poverty," I felt confident that a free hospital to serve the poorest state, West Virginia, would find easy funding and that we would be built in four years. Read more

Re-Designing the US Health Care System

By Susan Parenti

Our project: to change from the health care system we've inherited, into health care systems we desire.

We see two directions that dominate the talk around health care systems: that of corporate care, and—challenging this—that of single payer. We reject the direction of corporate care; we value single-payer and its radical rearrangement of financial incentives that would give all people access to health care; AND we invite people to widen the scope of health care system change beyond the financial aspect. The US health care system is in crisis and it's not only about 'who pays'. We call this widening of scope a 'third direction':  a call for a variety of ideas, innovations, models, practices, language, patterns that would constitute structural change in health care system delivery. Read more

Re-Designing the Character of the Care-actor

By Susan Parenti

The care-giving relation is the core of any health care system formed around it.  The system itself could be looked at as an 'outside', the care-giving relation its 'inside'.

Most efforts to change the health care system focus on the outside. The fixation in the United States around the financial aspect of the health care system—around the question 'who pays'—attests to this.

While we support these efforts, we also ask ourselves the questions: could significant change happen from that 'inside'—the caregiving relation'? Could care-givers and the healing relation be powerful contributors to health care systems change? Read more