Unified Healthcare

The RA Guy

I read an awesome blog post on the RA Guy's blog called: Rheumatoid Arthritis Healing Center.    It's an old post definitely worth revisiting.  The key idea I love about in this post is that all your health professionals are in one place and work together to help you have the best possible life all in a spa like setting combining the traditional medical appointment with your rheumatologist  with everything else that can make a difference; yoga, acupuncture, Physio, hydro, support groups, psychologists, doctors in other specialties and more.  The list was pretty comprehensive and the only thing I can think of to add is Pilates as it's something that has made a big difference for me.

I think that bringing all of the health professionals together like this would be awesome.  The people that would choose to work in this kind of environment would be ones that I would want to see.  People who understand that it isn't going to be just the medicine that is going to help.  Healthcare is slowly changing and the professionals that I have found to work with have been great.  For a long time and for a lot of doctors that I have seen anything out of the ordinary is seen as 'new fangled hippy rubbish' that doesn't do anything.  I once had a rheumatologist remark that the physio treatment I was receiving probably wasn't doing anything for me.  I was pretty upset by that as I when I came to him I was so happy with the increases to the range of movement that I was seeing and the improvement in my overall health and wellbeing, I couldn't believe that he would discount the effectiveness of the treatment.  Seriously, even if it was all in my head, what was the harm?  Why criticise? He went on to tell me that I couldn't afford to put on any weight and I pretty well had no options to improve my quality of life.  I found another specialist.  Thankfully, not all doctors are in the stone age. The team that I eventually found is one that I would expect to fit in to this concept quite well.

Attitudes are changing and it isn't just health professionals that need to come to the party.  We do too.  Having a community centre like feel will help visitors to maybe explore other services that will help them reach their full potential.  All aspects of life and body maintenance in one place is an awesome way to kick start the process.  The alternative is to spend years finding them which is something many don't have the confidence or resources to do.

The RA Guy has since updated his concept and posted it on his blog at: Autoimmune Wellness Center.  There is even a picture of what it might look like.  Check it out.  I'm sure you'll like it as much as I do.