Surrounded By Heros in Health Care Reform PDF Print E-mail
Written by Micheal Elliott   
Tuesday, 01 December 2009 21:30
I am sitting in the conference room of the Georgian Terrace in downtown Atlanta, Georgia at the opening session of the International Street Medicine Symposium. There are about 120 doctors, nurses, dentists, and other health care professionals from around the world who actually deliver health care on the streets of the world. Sitting in front of me is Jack Pegrim who operates clinics on the streets if Calcutta. Dr. Jim Withers from Pittsburgh is to my right,he is the founder of this movement. Dr. James O'Connell from Boston is behind me. Dr. Noemi Doohan from Santa Barbara is sitting beside him.

This is an amazing collection of people who are going to spend three days together sharing their experiences, stories, challenges and lessons. Tom Andrews of Mercy Mobile of Atlanta and Lucy Hall of the city's Mary Hall Freedom House are currently presenting. This afternoon we will visit the Gateway Center, Atlanta's one-stop-shop for homeless people that is housed in the former city jail. Then all of these people will actually hit the streets, find homeless people where they are, and practice medicine on the spot.

Dr. Joe Buck of Houston has developed a mobile electronic medical records program so that these practitioners can communicate with area hospitals to access the medical records of the patients who are being treated on the streets. These people are heros. Many of them have won national awards and are famous in their settings. They are passionate, mostly young or middle age, and do their work alone. This is because street medicine is outside of the box of how health care is being delivered in the world. We demand that sick people go to where healthc care is rather than taking the cure to where the illness resides. House calls should have never gone away. These people are replacing that old custom with house-less calls. The economic savings to the health care savings of this practice is in the millions!

Policy makers in Washington are currently trying to reform health care. They are trying to increase access but are keeping the same system. Sick people will still have to go to where the health care is. That is not real reform. The stuff that is going on at this conference is where real reform is taking place, being discussed, and a movement is growing. I am proud to be a part of it.