Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Why the Geography of Medicine is Important

As we hear more and more information about health reform efforts, it is very easy to become confused about what needs to be changed and why. Health is a very complex topic, and the organization and finance of medicine adds more layers of complexitiy. As a result, it can be a daunting task to understand how to improve our health services delivery system in the US.

The purpose of this blog is to focus attention to the human ecology of health and medicine by looking at medical outcomes on a map. Most people are good at reading maps, and maps put complex issues in our own backyards. Most importantly, we can compare our areas, or where our friends and family live, to other areas. Recent efforts to map healthcare outcomes as described below allow people to quickly make comparisons and then think about why these differences might occur (assuming the differences are meaningful and real).

I believe the variation in healthcare costs and quality as illustrated by maps is often real variation. This means that some places have better medical care than others. Once more people look at health in this way, they will be less likely to be confused by biased media and "noise machines". I think they are more likely to say, "Hey wait, the data on the maps show huge differences in costs and quality, so lets focus on the real problem."

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