Patients are Not “Consumers”: My Cancer Story 

By JEFF GOLDSMITH On Christmas Eve 2014, I received a present of some profoundly unwelcome news: a 64 slice CT scan confirming not only the presence of a malignant tumor in my neck, but also a fluid filled mass the size of a man’s finger in my chest cavity outside the lungs. Two days earlier, my ENT surgeon in Charlottesville, Paige Powers, had performed a fine needle aspiration of a suspicious almond-shaped enlarged lymph node, and the lab returned a verdict of “metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck with an occult primary tumor”.  I had worked in healthcare for nearly forty years when cancer struck, and considered myself an “expert” in how the health system worked. My experience fundamentally changed my view of how health care is delivered, from the patient’s point of view. Many have compared their fight against cancer as a “battle”. Mine didn’t feel like a battle so much as a chess match where the deadly opponent had begun playing many months before I was aware that he was my adversary. The remarkable image from Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal sums up how this felt to me. The CT scan was the second step in determining how many moves he had made, and in narrowing the uncertainty about my possible counter moves. The scan’s results were the darkest moment: if the mysterious fluid filled mass was the primary tumor, my options had already dangerously narrowed. Owing to holiday imaging schedules, it was not until New Year...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Medical Practice The Business of Health Care Cancer Jeff Goldsmith Medicare Advantage Patient Experience Source Type: blogs