Driving south toward Charlottesville on US-29, you might notice a big green sign on the right. I always do, and it kills me every time.
"X-ray, CT, Mammography, Ultrasound, Ahead on Left 3.6 miles."
As a medical student, my mind whirs through patient cases faster than Kroger's supply of Solo cups disappeared two weeks ago when the undergraduate population returned to Charlottesville. I have seen medical technology really help patients. I think of parents' excited faces when they learned they were having a baby boy with the help of ultrasound. I think of a patient with a suspected stroke who needed a high resolution CT to spot any bleeding in the brain before we considered administering a potentially fatal clot-busting medication. The medicine could have been fatal, and there was virtually no way to tell which type of stroke was occurring without a CT scan. Medical technology can save lives, quite literally.
But medical technology alone is not health care. It also happens to be one of the most expensive parts of health care.
Someone very smart, whose job it is to know what grabs the attention of the average driver on US-29, thought that marketing medical technology - rather than quality health care - directly to the patient should be the preferred strategy. I bet it's a pretty effective sign because of its elegant simplicity. Apparently we want the fancy scan more urgently than we want the highly trained professional to tell us if we need the scan. Rather ironically, extremely complex medical technology is actually easier to understand than the health care system a patient unwillingly enters when he goes to the doctor. I believe that's because we carry technology around in our left pocket but find it a bit tougher to cram a complex health care system into our right.
As technology-driven Americans, we may think of illness in the same way we see other problems in our daily lives. I address organizational problems by using a Droid device to keep e-mail, an address book and a calendar in the same place, so should I apply the same principle and deal with a health problem by thinking I need a new piece of medical technology to examine me? Just as there is always a new and improved Droid to buy for a month's rent, so too are there a multitude of newer, better medical devices for hospitals to buy for a king's ransom.
So what's the difference between a CT scan and a Droid, you might ask. Well, for starters, my Droid phone is designed for me to use and interpret on my own. I know when its use could be dangerous - like while driving, or calling an ex-girlfriend at 2 in the morning, or perhaps calling an ex-girlfriend while driving at 2 in the morning. But even a highly educated patient does not know exactly when or how to apply complex medical technology, let alone how to avoid the potential dangers of the technology if used improperly.
The Journal of Allied Health published a study in which less than half of 200 surveyed adults agreed with experts about the risks of radiation exposure. Understanding the nuances of how radiation in different doses impacts the human body takes years of training. That's why we have doctors, nurses and other medical professionals to apply medical technology safely, along with other diagnostic tools, to care for patients. But it's more difficult to understand and compare health care systems than it is technology with its constant tangible upgrades. Turns out physicians don't get operating system updates as frequently as our Droids do.
If the American public desired more compassionate and competent health care, rather than fancier scans, I don't think we would see blatant medical-technology marketing where we should really see advertising for true, complete health care. If that were the case, we might see signs that read, "Nationally recognized physicians and nurses ready to care for you in top-notch facilities ... Ahead on Left 3.6 miles." OK, we might need two signs.
Tom Mendel is a University Medical student. He can be reached at t.mendel@cavalierdaily.com.
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