Dr. Matt Daggett: Putting Health & Care Back in Healthcare

Improving the health of our community

What really is healthcare? We say the term healthcare all the time.  We speak about it every election cycle.  Every one of us needs health care at some point in our life, and in any given year every one of us, or a family or friend, requires it to maintain our standard of life or even life itself?   But what is it?  How does it work?  Is equitable for all of us?

It is amazing how something so central to our society and to us individually, has become so complicated, so expensive, and so misunderstood. Consider the following facts:  US healthcare costs on average $11,000/capita….to put that into context, that’s almost double the average for developed nations.  Healthcare spending in the us accounted for, get this, nearly 1/5^th of our entire GDP last year.  The life expectancy in the US is 78.6 years, which is 4 years less than the average for developed countries (84 in Japan).  According to a UN Report, we continue to get worse every year and are now ranked 19^th in the world as a country’s happiness. As Jimmy Kimmel quipped regarding this finding, “We finished 19th on the list behind Belgium. The people who feel the need to put mayonnaise on their french fries are friggin happier than we are!”

While Kimmel is funny, the statistics are not.  According to a recent CDC report, suicide attempts by girls ages 12-16 went up 50% in 2020 compared to 2019. 50%!!!  Death by overdose up 30%  In addition mental health and addiction, obesity is an ever-increasing problem. Consider this given the challenges we currently face with covid-19 epidemic.  According to the CDC, among 150,000 adults who received a COVID-19 diagnosis during an emergency department (ED) or inpatient visit at studied U.S. hospitals last year, 79% of patients were overweight or obese. In fact, obesity is one of the largest independent risk-factor for mechanical ventilation and death.

So I ask again, what is healthcare?  In 2021, in the US, we are outspending other developed countries by double and yet we are unhappy as ever and not improving our life expectancy at the rates of other countries.  What are we doing?  How did we get here?

When you think back to the horse and buggy doctor of the prairies compared to 2021 we can point out a lot of things that have driven us into this seemingly abyss?  Governmental regulation, defensive medicine, mal-aligned incentives, waste, administration, etc.  We can name no less than 1,000 reasons.  We need to get back to basics. We need to put Health and Care back into healthcare.  We need to re-align incentives that focus on delivering value to the consumer and put the choice in their hands.  We need to financially incentivize prevention and wellness and have upfront pricing on interventions and procedures.  As healthcare providers, we should be reimbursed for keeping you, the patient healthy!  For example, in shoulder surgery, in an ideal world, I shouldn’t be paid by the number of codes and things I perform in the surgery….I should be paid on how happy the patient is that they had the procedure performed in the first place.  We talk about outcomes all the time, but what measurement do you place on the outcome of a patient that didn’t need surgery in the first place?

Sano was created with the belief that there is a better way.  Sano is Latin for health, and to get back to health, we need to get back to basics.  Our mission is to improve the musculoskeletal health of our community and focusing on all four aspects of musculoskeletal health, prevention, wellness, injury, and intervention.  We aim to be a disruptor by not just talking about service and quality but proving it. As providers, our physicians are reimbursed based on our patient experience. Our net promoter score for the last eighteen months is higher than Amazon, Netflix and Starbucks.  We have invested in technologies and service lines such as Sano Motion Capture and bone health clinic in order to be more proactive in preventing costly injuries for our community and you will see more services like these being unveiled over the coming months.  We don’t just believe there is a better way, we are spending our energy and resources investing in it.

Yet Health Care change takes all of us.  Consumers must demand change.  Patients must demand change.  We must all stop talking about how important things like prevention, wellness, and mental health are and start investing in doing the things, both as a society and individually to improve our health.  As we battle the covid-19 pandemic, we must also acknowledge and fight equally as hard against the hidden pandemics of mental health, drug addiction, and obesity.

We should all want and demand better.  This is our unwavering focus at Sano.  We don’t want just to fix and restore you to health when injured. We want to improve your health and the health of our community.  This facility was created with that singular goal in mind. Thank you to so many who are joining us on our mission and journey.

– Dr. Matt Daggett