One More Thing…

In our cover story, Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus urges us to be agents of change. This issue, our second for Healthcare Transformation, provides articles that envision new policy, new professions, new technology, and new ways to help patients direct their own health planning.

The dialogue about change in this issue tends to focus on helping people with what we call chronic illness. We know this story—American medicine is spectacular at handling acute illness. We fix well. What we do less well is help those for whom a cure isn't at hand. We don't prevent well. We struggle to help people who live with disease to find strong relationships, convert anger to action, and discover happiness regardless of illness.

As a result, we're likely to see emerging health professions for health and life planning. We're likely to see stewards, coaches, motivators. And we'll see integrated plans handled through telehealth.

Telehealth, of course, is not new. It's just finding its way to the point where, as former Apple CEO John Sculley says, we'll just drop the “tele.”

Even the baby gets it:

© 2012 Grimmy, Inc. King Features Syndicate, Inc., World Rights Reserved

Next issue: Our election special. It certainly feels as though Democrats and Republicans couldn't be further apart. But as our Editor-in-Chief Steve Klasko argues, the disruption in healthcare will outpace policy—and make an optimistic future for healthcare more possible than it appears.

We want to hear your thoughts—on telehealth, on emerging health professions, on change, or on the future of our national debate about health.

Please write me at [e-mail]. We want to hear from you.