Archive for the ‘advocacy’ Category
Process
This week I have been thinking a great deal about the process of many things in life, things that are in theory quite simple, but are forever made difficult by what we have to do to follow through. I wonder how much time goes into this, how the process ends up being what it is.
Let’s start with Target.
More specifically, I point to the Target dressing room–at least the one in Framingham. My daughters were trying on shorts, and though we have tried on clothing there before, the girls forgot and headed back to a room without stopping.
“Wait!” called the attendant, who was rummaging through heaps of clothing near the entrance to the fitting rooms. “You need to take a number!”
The girls went back, and the attendant counted through the pairs they had chosen, handed them a number.. just like at Marshall’s, only not obvious at all.
I waited while the girls were in the fitting rooms, and watched as countless other people pushed carts through the narrow space that linked two departments to the dressing rooms. Every single person who went in was confused. For some, it was the most obvious place to go from one part of the store to the next. Others wanted to try something on. But what is the process? As the rooms became crowded, the attendant became more and more agitated, shouting, chasing down customers to make them get a number.
I felt sorry for the attendant. It seemed so obvious that the process was making her life miserable, making things hard for customers, and so easy to solve. All that the store needed to do was to put up a sign, indicating that customers should check in first. In other stores, the dressing rooms are set up so that it is impossible to go to the changing area without being stopped first. In some places, no one stops customers from trying on clothing in a private stall. In some places, an attendant has to unlock the doors. But when no one knows what to do, tempers can flare.
So, this is Target’s clothing department, which–we hope–is a relatively non-urgent area. But consider the medical world, where no matter the level of urgency, the level of stress is significantly higher than any retail experience. Or my service-oriented world, where people look to us to help them figure out how to find long-term supports. These are significantly more life-altering experiences than any clothing purchase. But the process to getting help is even more confusing. If it weren’t, quite honestly, I would not have a job (or at least, not this job).
The thing we have to remember in our own individual worlds is that we are here everyday, and have come to a certain comfort level with the way things are.
So, we forget to step back and remember how bewildering it has been to us to enter a new and strange place, like an emergency room–in an emergency. Or even how it feels to go apply for food stamps, when we need them badly but feel ashamed to ask.
I have a son with autism, and was always intrigued by the oft-used strategy of “social stories”–scenarios that explain step-by-step what to expect in certain situations. I have thought of this often, not only for people with autism, but for all of us. How much clearer life is when we can step back and focus not on whether we are adapting properly to the culture of a situation, as much as successfully accomplishing what we set out to do. At times this is critical, life-saving.
But more than expecting people to adapt to us, I am thinking lately more about what we can do as service providers to simplify what we do, to make our work more transparent–and in fact, more simple for ourselves, as well.
Not rigid–not incapable of tweeking or allowing for the unexpected. In fact, easier to tweek, more resilient.
It starts the moment we walk in a door, or place a phone call, look at a website… How does it look? How does it feel? How does that feeling affect our interactions with the individual? Are we attracting only certain types of people because of the environment we create? Do our unseen barriers shut out others?
Change both in healthcare and in services is on the way, whether we like it or not. Might as well embrace it, I say.. And I mean this. This is the opportunity we have to let consumers guide our thinking on what we as professionals do. Are we doing all we can to begin from a place of excellence? As I see it, the work we do can only improve, the trust we inspire can only be stronger, if we make our process clear from the start.
So.. I have arrived at the emergency room. How am I triaged? Who has priority? What can I expect?
A navigator stationed in the waiting room could make an enormous difference. Snacks for tired children. Free coffee. Obvious signs for the bathroom. Estimated wait times. But above the fluff, and most important: tell me what to do, and whom to tell, if my situation changes while I am here. Is there a sign explaining this? Can I understand it?
And when you move me back to a room, do not just leave me there to guess, and worry. The process of the emergency room is sometimes as bad–maybe worse–than the injury that prompted the visit.
A service agency can clearly display its signs from the street. A waiting area can be friendly, welcoming, non-threatening, but professional and serious. Does your name tell me who you are? Give me informative literature. What is the mission? How does a person get help? Is it okay that I just walked in? Explain the process. Is it still confusing? Can someone talk to me now? Maybe the process needs a change.
Just as great design can improve our experience of a beautiful home, design of our process can improve the good work we do. Let’s step back from our busy day-to-day, and just consider this, walk in our doors and think of how it all feels to the people who seek our services. It matters.
And the Backlash…
Last week I wrote about “This American Life” and the story about SSDI. My reaction was to applaud the exposure, the understanding of an invisible population of people with disabilities who are unable to work.
Many in the disability world, though, were not so generous in their view of this story. A number of organizations have pointed out the problem of lumping disability benefit programs in with welfare. They point out how incredibly difficult it is in many cases to get the much-needed assistance that SSDI and SSI provides to individuals and families, and that the program did not adequately reflect this. And I noticed that the portrayal of medical insurance did not tell the whole story, either. (It takes two years to receive Medicare for most SSDI recipients; Medicaid coverage is immediate for those approved for SSI.)
The truth? It is incredibly difficult to battle bureaucracy, no matter what the circumstances. It involves entering a world that seems entirely isolated from the official story, and it sure as hell does not come with a guidebook.
It hardly matters when the word “disability” comes into play; as soon as a disability affects any aspect of life, i.e., prompts the need for assistance or accommodation, the disability bureaucracy starts churning. It is impossible to move forward in life without going through it, and sadly, going through it is a brutal, demanding, demeaning exercise in proving to the rest of the world that it matters, that a person matters.
It happens in hospitals and doctor’s offices, in schools, in employment, in housing, in transportation, in everything–where suddenly a person with disabilities suddenly has to ask permission for access to everyday activities. It shocks and terrifies people who have never been through this process–and not without reason. It is not the person, however, who is shocking or terrifying; it is the system itself. No one should have to prove the need for human interaction–the right to be a part of the community–and all the things that may unite us as human beings.
What I found compelling in the NPR story was the recognition of people who are so often left out of the big picture, whether it be economic, or anything else. The story, while incomplete, has started conversations.
Define “Disability”
I was home sick over the last week, and had a lot of time and fever to lie around pondering philosophical questions…
…like, what is disability?
My mom, whom I am going to keep using as a reference whether I mean to or not, hurt for most of her adult life, and could hardly breathe or walk for the last few years. Yet, she never considered herself to be disabled. I found out how she had to use a towel to turn her key when she started her car, because her hands were so mangled from rheumatoid arthritis. Some call that an accommodation, may even find some better solution. Some don’t bother, and call it getting the job done.
But I thought more of this after kicking back with NPR on the old radio, listening as I like to, to This American Life. And wouldn’t you know it this week.. the program was all about disability.
Instead of listening to me ramble on for too much longer, please go listen. Ira Glass talks with Chana Joffe-Walt of Planet Money, who hopefully will take this stuff to the big time, meaning, beyond the realm of people who already know how discouraging it is to try to live a normal life as a person with a disability. I hope this will bring attention to the impossibility of being a person with less-than-optimum health and less-than-optimum education. Golly, can we do no better than this? I always think…
You see, I hear about places like the poor town portrayed in this episode, and I’ve lived in or near a few of them. People work hard, physically hard, do what they are supposed to do, and eat what they are accustomed to eating. In years past, even in my childhood, there was some wholesome aspect to it all, but as factories closed, as high fructose corn syrup got put into everything, as satellite dishes and video games replaced the outdoor sort of entertainment I remember, hope seems to have evaporated in towns like this. I exaggerate, perhaps. Or not. I stereotype. I apologize. There is always more to the story, and nuances that are missing. But still, it is hard not to look for something, when so many people are in such tough circumstances.
But is this what it means to define oneself as “disabled”? Is this all there is?
Ticket To Work?
Is it impossible in general to escape not only disability, but to escape poverty in general? It takes a really good job–a huge leap in most cases–to be able to survive beyond the world of TANF and SSDI (or SSI).
Work and love.. Freud said that these are the two things we need to be content in life. If we take that ability away, are we truly fulfilling our own Declaration of Independence?
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
And indeed, are we not creating inequality? Are we denying equality?
Just asking…
One Wish
I see that the future is here already, care integration, or what it may be…
I see that the people I see still need help, more perhaps now than they did in previous years. Perhaps it is the years of trying that have worn people down, or perhaps it is my own wishes.. wishing that we could do this right. It really involves more than a new coordination of healthcare; it is a more holistic thing we need, though.. a recognition of all that life has to do with health, and all that health has to do with life.
Will we succeed in these new ventures? I want to be optimistic about our new care organizations, what they may be, as we head into a new era. I want to think that the medical model that will prevail will expand and reinvent itself.
Wish. Yes, this is the best we can do.
Why Am I Waiting Here?
Back last fall, when my mom had experienced another frustrating exchange with her primary care physician, she announced her plan of action.
“He never listens. I am going to bring this up at the next appointment.”
At that appointment, my mom swiftly asked her doctor, “Do you like me?”
I was taken aback by the question, and I believe the doctor was, as well. In talking to someone else about her concerns, my mom had learned of personal tragedies in her doctor’s life. Perhaps that explained his inattention, she thought. Or maybe it was true that he just didn’t like her much.
My mom was a difficult case, in many ways. An order to cut back on salt that she received in the hospital seemed so overdue that we wondered if it really was the first time she had heard it. She had given up smoking, albeit pretty late in the game. Her lifestyle was not an active one, comforted as she was by being home, immersed in a book, or Downton Abbey… damned be exercise. Noncompliant, I am sure.
But aren’t we all? I mean, really. There is such a big relief in getting past that encounter with any authority… you know? those days, or weeks, behaving as we are supposed to… not necessarily to be healthier, or better in some other way, but to avoid the scolding (or worse). And then, we walk out, free at last… this is the problem with the relationship that even entertains the notion of “compliance”.
And as I have said so many times before, compliance may be more a question of feasibility. If an individual cannot afford the prescribed medication, how will he be able to follow the doctor’s orders? If she cannot get to the doctor’s office because a ride never shows up, how can she avoid being a “no-show”? If I do not understand why you want me to change a habit, if the reasons you give me seem so intangible, why would I give up something I love, or start something I dislike? And speaking of this, why should I trust you at all?
I am very sure–have felt it myself at times–that what doctors perceive as noncompliance may indeed be just that: stubborn refusal to follow orders. In my mom’s case, I know that it was hard for her (though she did it anyway) to make the trips to the lab for endless blood tests for a doctor who seemed to dislike her, and who also seemed to have no notion of why these trips into the lab were so taxing on her. It is hard, after a bad–or even traumatically pointless–experience, to return to the doctor who started it, and have faith in the advice (or orders) that this doctor, or any doctor sometimes, hands out.
It is clear in this year that the climate is changing enormously. There is a much more noise now about the need to take the consumer’s point of view seriously. Is it real? Slowly getting to real, yes, I think it is. How can we make healthcare easier? How can we deliver care more conveniently, and effectively, not just for the professionals, but for the people who seek the care? I see people from the home care world now popping up at technology-related events where I never saw them a year ago. Social workers will cover the hospital not just during weekdays, but at night, on weekends, so that people who end up there will always have the opportunity to talk to someone about the realities of life, no matter when they are in the hospital. Can we afford continuity of care? I hope that we see the error of years of neglect, at the real costs of constantly cutting out the human contact in favor of the urgent, impersonal procedures. It is time that we need more–time for listening, and for actual, physical help–and smarter ways to figure out how to create more connections, not fewer.
Sticks and Stones
The man was nearly sixty years old, a generous guy with a productive life. He loved his family, and enjoyed his work at the local supermarket. But there was one thing that brought him to tears the day I met him: the R-word.
I do not need to repeat the word. He told me he was “in the slow classes at school”, and recalled the habit he developed so long ago of hiding in the bushes after he got off his bus. It was only a short walk home from the bus stop, but best, he said, not to have to walk in front of the bullies who taunted him with that word. He had heard it again recently, from someone who had hurt him in other ways. He said that hearing that word again brought back a lifetime of pain, pain that he had escaped largely in the adult world, but not without some journeys into worlds with alcohol and other distractions.
The word was more than a word, of course: it was a way of limiting him to a certain place in this world. The fights he is fighting right now are all around that. He wanted to make decisions about where he lives, whether he walks or goes by bus somewhere, who his friends are. And everyone “worries.” A diagnosis of mental retardation implies a certain need for safeguarding. And this man did not want to be “kept safe”. He wanted to go on living the life he had lived before.
Words can hurt, just as badly as sticks and stones. Worse.
But it is not only the obvious slurs, the outmoded names that differentiate people who have faced discrimination. Any diagnosis can limit, in its narrow description that reduces the person to the medical condition. We seek some way to order the chaos that being human presents to us, and in some ways it is helpful, helps us chart a way through unclear paths.
But a diagnosis is only as good as a vague road map; it does not show us who a person is, or how the medical conditions may affect the life.. or what the life is really like at all. Without consideration of the whole person, that clear path on paper may turn out to be much bumpier and less predictable than we want it to be. It may also exclude joy, and hope.
I hope that as we shift focus from a system of medical management to an actual health system, we fight the urge to categorize people as we categorize disease. I hope that we can remember the power of words, and the danger of reductionism, the pain and indignity of dehumanization.
Experts
As I was driving to a meeting last week for the Dual-Eligible Demonstration Project, a man stood out near the stoplight. He was holding a sign, “I do not drink. I had a stroke and am homeless.” I nearly picked him up and took him to the meeting.
His story–the story reported on his sign–is far from unusual in my world. But it is unusual enough that the experts who treat strokes as an acute medical event still fail to understand the repercussions of health conditions on everything else in life–and likewise fail to understand the effects of everything else in life upon health conditions.
I am not talking about behaviors that are within an individual’s control; I am referring more to the chronic situations that come about first because of that acute medical event, and the difficulty not so much with the illness or accident itself as with the struggles in day-to-day life afterward.
The vision of projects that attempt to coordinate care for dual-eligible Medicare and Medicaid recipients makes a lot of sense, and could allow for the flexibility that can make an enormous in the quality of life of those individuals, and hence, in health outcomes.
But flexibility comes only when there is an understanding of the full picture of a person within the context of life, rather than within the context of a healthcare setting. This is where expertise of assessment comes into play, and where I fear that we are in real danger of getting tripped up by that very definition of expertise.
What is an expert? I see the established healthcare’s system respect for degrees and licenses, and see a structure that is resistant to accepting the expertise of the individual receiving treatment–except, sometimes, within the context of that treatment and the immediate needs around it.
It is not enough to share decision making, or to create a participatory system. More than that, the entire system needs to be flipped where the expertise of lived experience is valued as much as the expertise in the medical field. That clinical expertise is essential, of course. But it does not outweigh the practical aspects of life and the necessity of understanding how life changes all around when an individual’s health changes–and what can be done in all respects to improve the situation. We joke about a school of hard knocks, but the degrees we receive from life are just as valuable as those that we receive from studies within a well-established hierarchical system.
Part of the difficulty comes, too, from the harm that has come from years of medical arrogance. There have always been caring, wonderful medical professionals, and there always will be. In spite of any individuals, though, the power dynamic has allowed an enormous abuse, particular of people with disabilities, whose medical status amounts on a systemic basis to a problem either to cure or to ignore. The harm of this attitude is that mistrust of that system leads to mistrust of individuals–particularly in times of change where the powerful name the game–and where that power base remains so heavily weighted within the existing paradigm. More mistrust leads to defensive tactics, and to cynicism instead of listening, understanding, and working together.
Can the paradigm really shift in favor of the consumer in this new age of healthcare? I don’t know. I see vastly different attitudes about health and medicine in general in many other countries, where a broader range of health seems to be covered. But culturally those attitudes are so enormously different from the way we approach life here in the United States.. and we may not want to pay the taxes necessary to support such systems, even if we could accept that level of overt governmental control over our healthcare. But more flexibility? is it possible? Can we shift our system of medical care to one of health care, of care for people, that works, that truly supports the value of life, as is lived, itself? Time will tell.
Payment Source and Isolation
I once spoke to the owner of a home care agency who told me of his experiences with people new to the long-term area of health care. He told me that time after time, individuals insisted that their particular Medicare plan would pay for home care and personal care services in the home. He encountered others, whose private insurance was the best offered by their company, who held the same conviction and unshakeable faith in their coverage.
Then, soon after, he listened to the yelling, the anger, the incredulous voice at the other end of the phone, faced suddenly with the fact that our regular old insurance does not work so well when our needs switch from acute to chronic. It is a bitter pill to swallow, and a generic, over-the-counter, non-reimbursable one at that.
My colleague’s solution was to let calls go to voice mail: let another agency break that news, and lose the business (shoot the messenger). Often, after hearing the same news from enough sources, people simply realize that they have to pay up if they want long-term help at home… if they can.
If they cannot, they may enter into a new segment of the population: the Medicaid-eligible.
We all have been watching states grapple with their Medicaid plans in recent times, and have heard the normal complaints about the program. Part of the issue, I am sure, is the perception of Medicaid and its relationship with “welfare”, entitlements, free care. It is the insurance of the poor. It is also the insurance of one in four children, of many people with disabilities, and of 70% of nursing home residents. It is the only insurance that pays for any sort of long-term care at home, too, those these options are still too limited and often too restrictive–and Medicaid too hard to navigate–in my humble opinion.
But it is more than this: I wonder how it is that Medicaid is the only insurer to pay for any sort of long-term care. How did we fail to require this of our private insurers, or indeed, of Medicare?
As I was watching last week, as the Dual-Eligible (Medicare-Medicaid) demonstration project rolls out in Massachusetts, I realized that there is an enormous gap in understanding within traditional private insurance about how long-term care works, or even what it really means.
The issue, I believe, is that “long-term care” implies just that: it is care that goes on for a long time–or forever. And in this, it becomes the ordinary, an actual part of a person’s life, and not simply a single medical event, or even a number of them. Where a medical professional may well be able to impart some expertise on medical treatments for specific acute conditions, it is far more difficult for the same doctor to be the expert on a person’s day-to-day needs that come about as the result of a disability or illness–much less, to be the expert on a person’s wishes and preferences.
It matters, because prescribing ineffective doses of the wrong medicine in a person’s life will do harm, within a system whose intention first is to do no harm.
Ineffective doses could mean too few personal care hours. Wrong medicine could mean an ill-fitting wheelchair, or meals on wheels instead of assistance with grocery shopping. On paper, figuring out “appropriate” services seems easy: in reality, it will be the biggest challenge of the demonstration to determine how those dollars are spent. How much flexibility will this system allow? How long will it take for a new system to understand that the wrong equipment may lead to more hospitalizations? or that the agency-based personal care attendant’s refusal to show up at specific hours or to do specific tasks really will affect the long-term health of the individual needing those services?
For the lucky few who will never have to rely on Medicaid, extensive and often lavish options remain. Perhaps the limitations to private insurance and Medicare will still surprise, but the freedom of choice remains for those who can pay for it.
A medical model has always relied on a separation between healthy and sick, between abled and disabled, between normal and abnormal. And a medical model relies on maintaining these notions, on care that keeps the chronically ill, disabled, “abnormal”–and dare I say, poor–population isolated, for a long time–or forever. If private insurance and Medicare treat only the curable, then our payors isolate, as well, by refusing the reality of day-to-day needs inherent to medical conditions that will not be cured. In this isolation, a person becomes defined by a medical condition.
A person is not a medical condition. To isolate in this way is to deny the very humanity of that individual. Is this a responsibility that we as a society are willing to assume?
Dream On!
I was meeting on Sunday with a visionary, a person who had a bigger idea of what would make a vibrant, living, artistic community, and he was describing the various challenges he has found with the people who spend so much time rooted in the “reality” of things as they are right now.
It’s a frustrating thing to have a great idea of what would make things truly great, only to be reminded, constantly, of all the good things that we can do right now. It feels sort of like having a bake sale to build a new school: laudable, perhaps, but a great effort that entirely misses the potential of those precious moments, and dreams small.
I think this often, as I think about tests and pilots and demonstrations that have a great vision in the beginning to solve a problem. The ones I have most encountered in my recent career world have something to do with access to services, and facility of navigating systems that can ideally fund the most basic needs, level the playing field so to speak for people who need wheels to get around, or an extra set of hands to pick things up.
There always seemed to be some prevailing notion that everyone can have adequate assistance, if only the system were simplified into one easy method–or no wrong method, at any rate.
I sometimes think back over the last few years, and wonder if the numerous individuals who benefited from that ease of access to services are now living better lives because of it.
I ask this now, as we contemplate the future of healthcare. I ask it, because I see the future efforts at developing new infrastructure, building new programs, and I think about the last several posts, in which I lamented the utter lack of essential services for various age and disability groups. All the knowledge and navigational assistance in the world is only helpful in so far as it stops an endless maze of pointlessness. And perhaps the visible hole of need brings along enough anger in its wake that more of us feel motivated to speak up.
We need a bigger vision. But it really is more than that, as I believe that the vision is clear enough and common enough to many people who have worked in or personally encountered the health and human service system. Dreaming of some world where we can respond quickly and efficiently to the obvious needs for housing, transportation, and personal care is not a waste in itself. Only, we do not need more focus groups or advisory committees; we need to start building. Action is bold, and it is unlikely. But it is absolutely essential to stop wasting time and money on securing our comfort zone. The small efforts may feel good in the moment, but really, when they keep us from focusing on the big picture, all they really do is waste our energy, and make us feel good about it.
The Buck Stops Here
Now, I don’t make the rules that exclude people, the entitlements that are available only in specific circumstances, not so much by need as by some other criterium, among a very few, select criteria. I also was never granted a magic wand, let alone fairy dust, to fabricate the accommodations and assistance for people who have the misfortune of getting sick, hurt, or old in this country. It may well be better here than in a lot of places in the world, but most people are bitterly disappointed, especially those who have long believed in our great country (perhaps even fought for it), when they learn how little help there really is, and just how desperate life can really get.
Now, this is not a cheerful message, I realize, but then, this has not been a cheerful sort of week–or month. It seems that something has happened, whether that is the flu, or the continuation of economic stress, or simply an aging population. But people I saw years ago keep returning, sometimes in far worse condition than they were awhile back.
That said, it seems that professionals I know are pretty aware of many of the programs and services that are available. It is great that waivers and services that were once a semi-secret now pop immediately into the minds of discharge planners and social workers and nurses and counselors of all sorts. Once in a while, I can run through the possibilities and tell someone something new–or I can help make the connections once a person transitions from one setting to another. But once–or twice–or three times–in a while, I meet individuals who have my name on a long, long list of “try-here” resources. Sometimes they have been told that I can work magic, find housing, or psychiatric care, or transportation out of the normal area boundaries.
I am no magician. I am no saint. I try, I know my stuff, but I also cannot lie, defer hope to the next person when I know full well that you and your family are in serious trouble if you are 53 years old, have a demanding job and a spouse who has not worked in ten years, two kids in college and a mortgage–and have a stroke.
Truth is, I never want to tell a person how amazingly limited the options really are in this situation, but I do tell. Often.
I do not want to tell a person that even though he has lost his entire life savings and home, he still has too much money to get help. I do not want to tell someone that it is a shame she is only 58, because if she were 60, she could get that help, that waiver, that thing that would change everything. But I do tell. I tell the truth.
We have an enormous responsibility when put in the position of providing assistance to people in crises. We want to help, always, I know. But I wonder, more, if at a certain point, the responsibility does not shift in each among us professionals, from the stage of vainly digging for exceptions to the rule, to pushing harder to challenge the rules–or moreover, the mindset behind the rules.
I look now at the enormous changes that we anticipate with a new age in healthcare, with a new term for our president, with new programs and initiatives–and I hope we can do more than talk about progress. We also face a time of cuts, further reductions in the spending on entitlements. We are getting older, dug into lifestyles that never envisioned a time that we would outgrow them. And in so many ways we have found comfort in the here and now, with utter disregard for the future, or for the here and now that we have so carefully hidden from everyday view.
I want to say that the level of caring is not good now, not fair–but changing. I want to feel that change, want to wake up and see a world where people are not driven to despair by the heartbreak of a nation that discards its sick and injured, and those who are neither sick nor injured, but simply different, who also are constantly fighting for a ramp, for a way in, for inclusion. It is hard to watch the bitter realities day after day, and not believe that our country can do better, can be better. I think of Martin Luther King today, as we all must, and find in his “I Have a Dream” speech these words:
“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight…”
We could, you know. But until then, I refuse to pretend that things are better than they are. I hope; I dream, but the buck stops here.
Only Anecdotal 