The U.S. healthcare system has been hailed as one of the most “advanced in the world,” but it has historically been built around a reactive model. This approach focuses on treating diseases and health conditions after they emerge and managing symptoms rather than addressing the root cause of an illness. While a reactive model has its merits, especially in emergency and acute care situations, it has led to escalating healthcare costs, an overburdened system, overworked providers, and dismal health outcomes for millions of Americans.
Moving towards models of care that take a proactive, personalized approach can help emphasize prevention, prioritize early intervention, and enhance overall well-being. This has the potential to dramatically improve health outcomes, promote value in healthcare, and improve the quality of life for both patients and providers.
The Cost of “Sick Care”
In a reactive healthcare system, care is typically provided after symptoms arise. By that point, an individual’s health condition may have progressed to more advanced stages, making it more costly to treat and harder for the patient to manage. In conventional healthcare settings, symptoms of a health condition are treated through prescription medications and little attention is typically given to the underlying causes of an illness. The term “sick care” has been coined to paint a picture of how the current healthcare system operates: providing a patient the means to manage an illness through medications or procedures, not to prevent or fully heal them from the condition at its root cause.
The cost of managing preventable (in most cases) chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and obesity places a huge financial burden on both the healthcare system and individuals. According to the CDC, 90% of the nation’s $4.1 trillion in annual healthcare expenditures are spent on chronic and mental health conditions. These conditions can often be mitigated or even avoided with preventive measures like healthy lifestyle habits, regular and comprehensive health screenings, and early interventions.
The Value of “Health Care”
Proactive and preventative healthcare focuses on maintaining health and preventing diseases from occurring in the first place. This approach can help alleviate the need for invasive interventions and long-term symptom management through expensive prescription medications that can often lead to other side effects that may also require further prescriptions to manage. Studies have shown that for every dollar spent on preventive care, the return on investment can be as high as $3 to $6 due to avoided emergency care and long-term treatment costs. Keeping a population healthy to begin with can be more financially sustainable than continuing to treat a population laden with long-term health conditions.
While chronic disease can’t always be prevented, its impact can be drastically reduced by investing in a preventative and root cause approach to care. Many indications for conditions like hypertension, diabetes, and high cholesterol can be caught early, managed effectively, or even avoided all together using this philosophy. Healthy individuals have a higher chance of remaining healthy through preventative measures, and individuals with an illness can receive comprehensive care and attention from a provider who can help address a condition’s underlying cause and restore them to optimal health.
Empowering Patients & Providers
Healthcare that is viewed through a proactive lens would foster a culture of health consciousness, encouraging people to take charge of their own well-being. It could also create a system where individuals are able to seek care not only when they are sick, but also to help maintain their good health, catch disease indicators early, and prevent future health conditions. By educating patients about the importance of healthy behaviors—such as maintaining a balanced diet, staying physically active, managing stress, and avoiding harmful habits like smoking—healthcare providers can empower individuals to make healthier choices and avoid long-term health implications.
A healthier population could also lead to a less overworked provider population. As it stands now in the current healthcare system, almost all medical professionals experience burnout. Primary care providers often carry the brunt of work, seeing hundreds of patients a week in short appointments with little time to devote to each patient. Burnout was cited as one of the major reasons why physicians leave the workforce, costing the industry billions of dollars annually due to turnover, reduced productivity, and other factors. Most importantly, it costs the livelihood of doctors who entered the profession with noble intentions of caring for the health of their patients. A model of healthcare that gives time back to providers to practice how they intended can help empower providers and continue to fulfil their calling.
Of course, shifting the U.S. healthcare system from reactive to proactive cannot be possible without a complete restructuring of incentives and policies. However, with chronic disease on the rise and cost spiraling out of control, the current model is unsustainable. Innovative thinking around how to create a culture of prevention in healthcare and support whole-body, root cause medicine could help move the needle towards a more effective and sustainable approach to care.
Imagine an approach to care where a person’s diet, exercise habits, mental health, advanced biomarkers, genetics, and family history are all considered by healthcare providers who have undergone comprehensive, root cause-oriented medical training. This would allow individuals to establish healthy lifestyle habits, know their health status at a deeper level, understand their unique health risks, and ultimately help reduce the need for invasive procedures or long-term medications and allow them to live healthier, more fulfilling lives. It could also lessen provider burnout, keep healthcare professionals practicing with a manageable schedule and fully present with their patients, and better equip them to balance work and life in a meaningful way.
It is evident that a healthcare system modeled in reactivity has not served to keep our population healthy, nor has it benefited the livelihoods of providers. Investing in prevention and creating unique models of care that prioritize a root cause perspective of disease, such as functional and integrative medicine, could help improve sustainability and overall health outcomes.
Learn more about our unique model of care and how you can become an Essential Health provider by contacting our team.