“Healthcare” conjures up an arsenal of heavy-duty science: physician-specialists, super-duper medications, brave new world diagnostic imagery. The titles are intimidating: interventional radiologists, serotonin reuptake inhibitors, computerized tomography, bariatric surgery – all befitting complicated diseases. “Healthcare” swoops us into an arcane universe, where “clinical trials” will yield the wonder-interventions that will cure whatever ails our failing bodies.How simple! How misguided! Even as we swoop into the scientific paradigm of wellness, we abandon commonsense. What ails our bodies may lie in microbes, malformations, and bacteria; but compounding that may be quotidian human misery. And the solutions may lie in such “interventions” as better food, better family dynamics, better shelter – in short, better lives.An article in the Washington Post (Oct. 6) highlights the value of commonsense. Montefiore Hospital is one of 19 Pioneer Accountable Care Organizations (a pilot under the Affordable Care Act) that broadened their scope of “healthcare” to include community services. One Montefiore patient had undergone a bone marrow transplant, part of treatment for blood cancer. The operation was a success. But this patient was homeless, living in a shelter an hour away by public transportation from the hospital. Fortunately for him, Montefiore has a “housing unit,” with a skilled social worker, charged with finding apartments for homeless chronic patients. This case offers up no simple solution: the article makes clear that the patient would have to alter his lifestyle in exchange for the apartment. And a landlord would have to accept this patient. But the article also makes clear the consequence of homelessness: without a stable home, close to the hospital, the patient would probably not survive, even after a successful transplant.Read More.Source: Populist.Com/Joan Retsinas