We’re Coming, We’re Coming

“The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.”

– Albert Einstein (attributed)

On an eve, not so very long ago, a couple of health care amateurs set out to change the world…

…and then we realized that we didn’t know anything.

And rather succinctly I’ve arrived at my point: one must be smarter than Einstein to really change our system and bring about an era of sustainable health care.

So we’ve returned to school for more education (obviously we have taken getting rich off of our lives’ to-do lists, we acknowledge intrinsic motivation for setting our sails toward this career path) and quickly realized that the classroom is a great place to understand concepts (and we appreciate the tutelage we have received thus far–for it would be much more difficult without our professors’ great insight) but time constraints placed a limit on our discussions. And for those of you who have studied health care know how impossibly difficult it can be to understand that many people consider health care a real business (they do what!?) (hold on, hold on, hold on, hospitals get paid how!?) (so you’re telling me that doctors don’t work for health systems? well, right, most of the time. what!?) (it is…a business I mean, one that seems to operate very differently at almost every turn). And this can all become very frustrating, so we started spending our free time (“you have to be nuts”) talking about health care. Questions (tons of them) were raised while answers (probably even more) were tougher to come by based upon our limited experience.

Solution? Solution: our own system.

What better way to fix the health care system in this country by just starting over and starting anew (Second Life is for real). OK, not exactly plausible in a service industry that provides tangible care (you never know!). But we can talk (write!) about a virtual system. So we started a blog to serve as the internet home of our community. We’d be happy if our writing just improves our understanding of what actually goes on. But I envision much more (patience is a virtue). And we’d be happy to entertain (in fact, we encourage) the thought of other health care amateurs joining us here and providing valuable thought diversity and insight.

OK, so what is sustainable health care? I don’t have a clue (finding that answer is the mission of this here blog). Through community exploration and interaction we will:

– question the way things are in this system (seriously, because we don’t know)

– wonder (write, is probably more truthful) aloud the reasoning behind all we do

– and hopefully, along the way, by just conversing about the many conversational points there are sure to be, propose audacious (deep breath), bodacious (oh my!), and practical/useful/implementable changes

We’re not naive enough to think we have the ability to solve the (kajillion) problems in health care (yet!) but we are smart enough to realize that sometimes fresh perspectives are (pardon this awful expression) exactly what the doctor ordered. We haven’t been around long enough for the system to eat up our appetite for changing the world or diffuse our excitement for doing good. It has not consumed us yet (and I pray everyday that it will not).

This is at its very core a learning exercise aimed at making us all more knowledgeable.

So with that, we break the customary bottle of champagne over the bow of our own system, welcome.