hospital impact

by Nick Jacobs

Is it possible that we do not know everything there is to know about healing and health? In 1974 my neighbor asked me to help him with a piece of concrete that had been dislocated by the winter's frosts. We both bent over, lifted the 250 lb. slab, and his instructions were to drop it into place on the count of three. Well, at the count of three I glanced and saw his foot still firmly planted under the concrete. He had planned to pull it out. I didn't realize that, and held onto the concrete. I then could not stand up straight, and was bent like the letter L. Clearly, something had happened to my young year old back.

My neighbor carefully placed me into the front seat of his car, drove me straight to the emergency room, and the treatment began. First an x-ray where the physician asked if I had ever been a professional football player. When I had stopped laughing, I wiped the tears away from my eyes, and said, "Nope, but thanks." We can't miss the nuance of what occurred next. Muscle relaxants and the threat of what has been described as traction resulted in nothing, absolutely nothing. I couldn't walk, couldn't sit, couldn't stand, and felt as if a long hot knife was stuck in my back.

Two weeks later another friend saw me struggling to walk, put me in his car and drove me to a physician's office. This was a doctor that I was not familiar with, but he was pleasant, took my blood pressure, suggested that I have a Martini every night before dinner, looked at my feet and said, "Oh, this is simple, your sacro is out." He pulled on my right foot and said, "Okay, we're done here." I stood up and felt fine.

He was a DO, a doctor of osteopathic medicine who had been trained in manipulation. Although I was a teacher at the time, it seemed perfectly clear to me that medical professionals with varying views on treatments don't necessarily talk much.

In 1997 when I became the CEO of a hospital, my first decision was to become a Planetree Hospital and to create a menu of options for our patients. Because I am not clinical or medical, nothing was particularly sacred to me. My only concern was that our patients got better, and that we didn't fill our halls with quacks and unqualified tricksters.

Consequently, we introduced many aspects of complementary and alternative medicine, but the difference at our facility was that we used only medical professionals to deliver those modalities. We opened our patient rooms to accommodate family members 24hrs. a day, seven days a week. We placed double beds in our OB suites. We employed musicians, aroma and massage therapists. Our therapy dogs are there for the asking.

The concept is to provide a healing environment. The concept is to allow certified accupuncturists, manipulation trained DO's, PT's, OT's and others to provide those treatments chosen by our patients. The United States citizens are spending billions of dollar each year on these treatments, and many times they are administered by uncertified individuals.

It is my desire to give our patient partners choices. If they get better because their loved one is permitted to stay with them around the clock, or if a dog's love moves them back to health, it doesn't really matter to me. Just so they get better.

We use a very strenuous allied health professional credentialing process to approve these clinical specialists. We take medicine very seriously, and we pay out more than a million dollars each year on general liability and malpractice insurance but have paid out, on average, less than $20,000 a year for all claims in these areas because, if you treat people as partners, not patients, if you treat them with kindness and love, and if you don't make them leave their diginty at the door, they will be your partner. If you create a healing environment void of negative energy, mean employees and limited access to their loved ones, they will heal.

As a consumer, does it make you wonder why we all aren't embracing this philosophy?