A New Vision of Health Care

Because I spend a lot of time immersed in the 1930s and 1940s, doing research on the World War II period (following up on the Holocaust-releated book I co-authored), I was recently reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book about Franklin Roosevelt, "No Ordinary Time". One vivid section describes how President Roosevelt began experiencing headaches, blackouts, and physical weakening beginning in early 1944. His daughter insisted, over the objections of his personal physician, that he get a complete physical checkup, and accompanied him to Walter Reed Army Hospital. There, a heart specialist determined the president was experiencing heart failure. The specialist prescribed digitalis, a drug that improves heart functioning, along with more rest and a cutback in Roosevelt’s cigarette habit. Roosevelt returned to the White House and began his new regimen.

What was most intriguing about this episode, though, was that Roosevelt during his exam and afterwards when he began taking the medication and having his blood pressure monitored never once inquired into the diagnosis or the medication he was taking. The doctors, for their part, never shared their diagnosis with him.

Roosevelt’s condition improved for a time, as the digitalis helped ease the symptoms of heart failure, but eventually he resumed his decline and in April 1945 he died of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 63.

I bring this up partly because it so aptly illustrates the old model of medical care–treat symptoms, view medicine as objective science, rely completely on modern medicine, and keep the patient passive. I also bring it up because a new model is gaining popularity, and I heard it described last weekend during my visit to Kripalu, the yoga center in Lenox, MA.

Kripalu is drawing up plans to create an "Institute for Integrated Healing" on the top floor of its main building.  Leigh Ellen Key, Kripalu’s director of the new institute, described to a handful of visitors a vision of its core principles of care:

• Medicine as personalized science
• Focus on the whole person
• Integration of modern and ancient
• Team orientation among doctors and other providers

Kripalu’s institute is a couple years off, but it will could be a real breath of fresh air.