Allan Besselink

Our Health, Our Culture, Our System, Our Failure?

Monday, 21 November 2011 21:11 Written by Allan Besselink

Neon There have been a lot of crazy options floated in the health care world about ways to decrease costs, increase treatment adherence, and the like. There have also been a lot of crazy paranoid ideas put forth, including the legendary “comparative effectiveness equals death panels” diatribe.

Meanwhile, the incidence of chronic conditions continues to climb – and with that, the cost of maintaining our current system.

There are many issues in the current health care system that are driven by factors unrelated to the care of the patients themselves. That is truly a sad state of affairs, but the reality that we must face.

But with that said, there is a question that swirls around this: is the health care system itself fully to blame? Or is there a cultural issue that is inherent to our health care woes?

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Friendship: New Meaning In The Digital Age?

Friday, 02 April 2010 19:48 Written by Allan Besselink

I offer you friendshipFriendship. It’s a word that used to have a fairly consistent meaning amongst people. There are certain things you would do – and wouldn’t do – to your friends. There was a certain responsibility to the process of friendship because you had a great deal of accountability and very little anonymity.

But that was back when our friendships were defined by our face-to-face interactions.

In the present day world of social networking, it has come to mean something, well, completely different. It’s a strange new world out there now that social media is a part of our daily lives.

There was a time when your friendships evolved from time spent together in each others’ presence, snail mail, and maybe even a phone call or two. You certainly didn’t have a digital existence. It was all so – analog. And simple.

But then there was email, followed shortly thereafter by Prodigy, America Online, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter … the list goes on. Now, you have a digital filter. Now, you have a degree of anonymity behind the monitor. Now, you have LOL and LMAO and emoticons. Now, we’re faced with the context of a digital existence dovetailing with your life. The journey that is friendship shows some tricky new twists and turns. Or does it?

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The Road To Health Care Is Paved With Good Intentions

Friday, 18 November 2011 23:13 Written by Allan Besselink

Road to hellEverybody seems to have the best interests of the patient at the heart of the health care reform discussion. Or so the story goes. That would be a wonderful, benevolent, valiant effort, wouldn’t it?

Countless examples abound these days. The pharmaceutical industry wants to make sure they advertise their products directly with patients. It makes it easier for the patient to go to the doctor and ask for the correct medicine, right?

Physician associations want to make sure that tort reform and medical liability reform are established nationally. It will ultimately save dollars and increase access to care, right?

Physicians want to be able to own their own imaging and laboratory facilities so that they can provide more convenient services to the patient. They might even call it “one stop health care”. Convenience is a good thing, right?

Even the Supreme Court wants to protect patients from the “unconstitutionality” of health care reform.

But the road to health care is paved with good intentions – and a lot of money.

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From Number One To Done In One

Tuesday, 23 March 2010 16:06 Written by Allan Besselink

College hoops vs KansasYou know it’s a sad day when this headline actually becomes a reality.

There was a time in January 2010 when the University of Texas men’s basketball team was 17 – 0 and atop the national rankings. Number one. They were typically going 10-deep on the roster without  any loss of quality or production.

They were a “can’t miss” Final Four team if ever I’ve seen one.

And now? After staggering into the NCAA tournament, this same team was eliminated in the first round by a Wake Forest team that subsequently had it’s proverbial backside handed to it by Kentucky one day later.

Texas is one of only five teams in NCAA history to have been #1 and then unranked. That’s not a statistic of which we should be proud. But there are plenty of reasons for their demise this season, and they start from the top.

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Running Longer Slower And The Demise Of The Track Club

Wednesday, 16 November 2011 11:27 Written by Allan Besselink

the start of my very own stock photo collection for presentationsIt seems like there is a stigma attached to running fast.

In the world of running as we know it today, there is a huge trend towards running a marathon. It might even be your first running event, and for many, their last. The number of marathon participants in this country has skyrocketed. This became even more readily apparent this past weekend when I attended the San Antonio Marathon as a spectator. Marathon training is now a social phenomenon.

In the meantime, the average marathon time is at least 30 minutes slower now than a decade ago. The average time for men is now 4:32; for women, 5:06. Injury rates reported in the literature vary from 60 to 90% of all marathon runners. So now the end result is that we have a lot of people running marathons, slowly, getting injured in the process, and perhaps not even running again.

Running longer slower has become the motto of the running community. Whatever happened to running fast? Perhaps it disappeared with the demise of the track club.

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