That the healthcare industry is broken and needs to be fixed is a message the general public has been hearing for years. The urgency of the country’s healthcare situation has so far largely failed to penetrate, but several new documentaries may change that, and that’s something those in the business of healthcare need to pay attention to.
In the last month, at least four healthcare-related films have made it before the public: “Doctored,” “The Waiting Room,” “Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare” and “Money & Medicine.” While each looks at the U.S. healthcare system in its own way, they all use compelling stories of everyday people to try to spur engagement.
“Everybody who works in healthcare likes to say that they are in it for the good of the patient,” said Shannon Brownlee, the author of “Overtreated.” “They may think that they’re doing things for the good of patients, but in fact, they’re often doing things for the sake of shareholders. They’re doing things for the good of the institution, in the case of the hospital. The patient often comes last in a lot of cases. That has been allowed to continue in part because the patient, who is really the ultimate customer here, has not been privy to what’s really going on.”
Documentaries like those in front of the general public now are cluing patients in to how the healthcare system works, and the more such information is put in front of them, the more the messages resonate.
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“I think that there is a real potential here for the healthcare industry really being pushed pretty hard to start changing the way practices happen, the way care is delivered,” said Brownlee, who appears in both “Escape Fire” and “Money & Medicine.” “Now is that going to happen overnight? Of course not. Is it going to happen just because of a couple of films? No. It’s going to take a lot more.”
As those in the healthcare industry will tell you, documentary filmmakers’ warnings of a healthcare industry meltdown are not new. Roger Weisberg, producer and director of “Money & Medicine,” has created documentary films on healthcare and medicine since the 1980s, for example.
But the situation the country finds itself in today – both on a healthcare front and on an economic one – is more dire than before, making the public more receptive to the messages presented in such films.
“As we try to lay out in the first minutes of the film, the healthcare cost crisis really threatens to bankrupt this country,” said Weisberg. “This is a crisis we have to address before we go over the proverbial fiscal cliff.”
Both “Money & Medicine” and “Escape Fire” make note of the costs associated with healthcare and the poor outcomes Americans get for that costly care, and point out how companies – those within the industry and those outside the industry – are trying to make changes to lower healthcare costs and get better health outcomes.
These two films, on the whole, focus on the need for change and the possibilities transformation present rather than spending a lot of time assigning blame for how the system got to be in such a tough spot in the first place.
“I don’t think (“Escape Fire” is) an attack (on healthcare businesses),” said Matthew Heineman, who directed “Escape Fire” with Susan Froemke. “People always ask ‘Who’s the bad guy? Who’s the devil? Who’s the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain? I don’t think there is one bad guy. I don’t think there’s a Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. I think the system developed in a way that’s just perverse. It’s a perverse system with a bunch of people just trying to do their job.”
No one entity – healthcare businesses, politicians, employers outside healthcare, patients, doctors – will be able to turn the industry around, noted Heineman and Weisberg.
“We all need to start thinking outside the box – (come up with) our escape fires, if you will, to try to figure out how to cut down costs and improve quality,” Heineman said. “It’s important that we are all a part of this change.”
Watch "Money & Medicine" by clicking here.
"Escape Fire" opens in select movie theaters nationwide and will be available on iTunes and video-on-demand on Friday.