You can look at the healthcare industry through many lenses — from the health insurance perspective to the clinician perspective and everything in between. No matter which lens is chosen, all views can see its complexity.

One deeply complex, niche area I have developed an interest in is both the conceptual and practical ways in which clinicians and patients interact with one another. You may be thinking, “Well, Lauren, there are more pressing problems to focus on right? Lowering the cost of care, investing in research for new drug therapies, improving access to care, for example…”.

My answer to this question is one that I want to explore in greater detail over the coming weeks. I hypothesize that the clinician-patient interaction is the root cause of many of our grievances in healthcare, including but not limited to: the cost of care, access to care, the efficiency of service delivery, medication adherence and health equity.

More specifically, the conversations not happening between clinicians and patients creates increased risks for misdiagnoses, proposing the wrong treatment plan and prescription drug errors, to name a few. It’s almost as if silence is, quite literally, killing us as consumers of healthcare services.

Stay tuned for upcoming discussions related to investigating clinician-patient interactions!