There was a fresh face in the hallways of MEDSEEK this summer - Luke Wilson, a rising high school senior who interned with our sales and marketing departments. He worked with sales operations to understand the current market place and helped research new marketing campaigns before returning to California to start his senior year. Luke wrote a few blogs from his newly acquired, unique perspective: that of a 17-year old who grew up in a world that always had email, the internet and cell phones and got an inside look at the current state of the healthcare system. This is the second post of his three-part blog series:
As stated previously, I did not know anything about healthcare before working with MEDSEEK. If you’re curious, healthcare to a teenager consists of three things: the emergency room, sports physicals, and shots. So, when a kid says “I went to the hospital,” it can mean anything from the ER to a private practitioner to an actual hospital.
Working at MEDSEEK gave me insight into how a hospital works with private practitioners, and how a hospital system works together, I began to realize very few people actually know how healthcare works. So I began to wonder:
What if… everyone was given a quick overview on how healthcare worked? How their local hospitals make their money, and how hospitals store their data. How many different types of legacy systems hospitals have, and how they have to try and dig data from all of them separately. How many hours physicians and employees spend on the phone, talking to patients and scheduling appointments.
What if… people could then be taught the different laws and regulations hospitals have to follow? How many different – yet similar – pieces of paper patients have to fill out for regulation’s sake. What having insurance means for a hospital and for the government. Why hospitals are just now starting to update their technology. Why it takes so long for hospitals to change. What an ACO is, and how it affects them.
What if… people could learn about the possible solutions available today? That there are ways to fill out all hospital forms online. That it is possible to see your lab results online, and then share x-rays or ultrasounds on Facebook. That you can talk to your physicians securely, and you can set up appointments without ever picking up the phone.
I feel like if the majority of people actually knew all of this, a number of things could happen:
- There would be an even higher demand for some sort of healthcare reform.
- There would be understanding for the long time frames in changing the system.
- There would be more pressure to reduce the amount of uninsured.
- There would be new ideas for reform and improvement.
- More people would be active in their healthcare and understand the importance of preventive care rather than curing existing conditions.
And quite possibly, if it’s true that we hate what we do not know, people would no longer hate going to the doctor’s office.
Read all of Luke's Blogs:
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