Health Care Reform? What's next?

Well who has read the new Health Care Reform Bill?  Nobody has glanced through all the pages?  Well I haven't either, there are more important things to read...like Pinkalicious to my 5 year old daughter at night for her bedtime story.

I think only time will tell what it will mean to American Health Care.  I do have faith that we have some of the greatest clinical practitioners in many areas (Physical Therapy being one that I am obviously most biased towards) and that patients will receive excellent caring and compassionate care.  But I often wonder if we may see more a shift toward health care providers being more educators and teachers to patients and families.  With the increase in people supposedly accessing the system with all people covered, there may be delays in care.  And when one does get in to be seen, there may be increased time between appointments.  I'm thinking of Physical Therapy for example, typically most patients in the outpatient setting I am in are seen 2-3 times per week.  But if there is more patients to see and most likely not an increase in staff, we will have to decrease the number of times each week the patient is seen to allow access for the additional patients.  The patient and family will take on increasing responsibility to know and understand their injury or illness along with what they need to do for their care.  While in many ways this can be a great thing for people to take increasing ownership in their healthcare, but will they?

Also with growing new research in neuroplasticity, The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science (James H. Silberman Books).  We are learning the amazing capabilities of our brains to continue to change and relearn things even after severe brain damage.  These changes for stroke, traumatic brain injuries and others are amazing to our once thought of a very static brain that once injured did not have much chance for recovery.  We are now learning with gradual properly graded therapy, significant changes in their function can be achieved far beyond our previous expectations.  The big thing that is needed is patience and persistence in the treatment approach.  I am not sure the health care system will be willing to pay for either.  But patients and families can be trained to carry out this treatment on their own with monitoring and ongoing training from qualified health care providers.  The delivery might look different, but it may actually get better.

While I don't know exactly what health care reform will bring, as none of us do (even though most everyone has an opinion), I do know the brain does change itself and it is was created for survival.  And spending time with my daughter reading books is far more important than worring to much over health care reform.

I'm curious to hear others thoughts on what the changes may mean to health care in America?