Dr. Oz Talks About Healthcare Reform with a “Clinical” and “Smart Patient” View

He talks about becoming a “smart patient” and how little impact regulations are having. He reiterates much of what I have said here too about being the informed patient. A somewhat comical example, asking someone if they have had a colonoscopy, duh, do you remember? Do you remember the device? A “smart patient” knows their medical history.

Texas and California spend more money on healthcare and get some of the worst quality in the US. The business model in the US for healthcare is flawed. He uses diabetes as an example of cookie cutter diagnosis, a solution that doesn’t require intuition and how it uses established protocols. Lifestyle management is discussed and he uses a study group with prostate cancer on how after a year how their DNA changed, based on lifestyle changes and the older we get, the more important changes are.

He speaks on the hot topic of obesity and states as a general rule we all may have around 23 extra pounds and discusses “tight belt syndrome”. It was interesting to see Dr. Oz out of his scrubs for this presentation too. 40% of Americans have fatty livers, fat poisons the liver.

He’s asking folks to think about a U-Turn with Healthcare. He states the key is to make it easy to do the right thing and automate much of the processes. Healthcare has been like taking a bus, very limited and change the model to a “rent a car” to go where you want to go when you want to go. If we don’t get participate Dr. Oz states, then no system is going to work, so once again we come back to being the “smart patient”.