The Portland Monthly Magazine just released their Top Doc’s of 2008 issue, and within the glossy color prints and thoughtful descriptions, you get the overall picture of how functional we are becoming in the health care industry. We’re learning to play nice, listen to all aspects of the issue, not pick sides and defiantly take the stance that there is only one and final answer. Because if you haven’t figured it out by now, there is not just one universal way to make health happen, we’re all different needing unique and personalized forms of health care.
The solution to our ailments and crippled health care system lies in its harmony, bridging different modalities with the common goal of effectively and efficiently providing health to the community. Portland’s Monthly mag managed to pave the way, providing a sustainable structure for health care in the Portland area, distributing roadmaps and contact information for those needing a little bit of direction along the way. A round of kudos is well deserved for Portland Monthly and, in a nutshell, its featured article Hippocrates, meet Lao-Tzu is more than satisfactory.
Author, Chris Lydgate, was successfully able to convey the current state of health care in the Portland area, but it really goes beyond just that. Yes, in the northwest we are privy to a unique cornucopia of medical practices empowering its patient base with choices and skills enabling optimum health, lower health care costs, and a better quality of life overall. More importantly, we are collaborating in ways that the rest of the nation has yet to discover, and cooperation is how we as a city are able to achieve this. Stumptown is about as progressive as it gets, home to organizations such as Recycle at Work and Focus the Nation, health care is simply another drop in the bucket. For us, critically thinking about the convoluted and complicated challenges affecting our current state of affairs simply makes sense. Why? Two real good reasons:
Numero Uno: Portlanders are basalmic by nature. During the rainy months of Portland we think-tankers take the opportunity to hunker down and reflect upon such unwieldy endeavors. We spend a lot of time indoors rubbing elbows and making collaborations with other fellows in our fields of practice.
Numero dui: Despite the fact that Portland has about 537,081 people, we somehow know one another and our “rule of separation” easily hovers around two. At some point or another you’ll bump into someone who is willing to put their thoughts and resources into the equation in order to make Portland more functional and practical for its people and the businesses therein.
The brass tacks of it: we like our city, we’re proud of our city, and we’d like to see it work for everyone.
So when it comes to medicine any debating based upon East versus West, natural versus conventional are yesterday’s news for this forward thinking town. Same goes for controversies that compartmentalize or pick apart medicine since there is rarely a solution offered in the argument. In the article entitled: Hippocrates, meet Lao-Tzu, author Chris Lydgate uses a holistic approach in his reporting style, reflecting a methodical and unbiased perspective on the infrastructure of Portland’s remarkable health care.
Lydgate discusses the issues in a frank and straight-forward manner, citing the variety of outlets for medicine, and its a complementary approach to understanding the “diverse healing traditions” available and utilized by the inhabitants of our fair city. Lydgate doesn’t shy away from the grey area created between the complexity either, different modalities of healing mean a multitude of mechanistic actions and clearly defining how each is able to effectively cure is not necessarily an easy task. Nor is it necessarily important in the grand scheme of things; if a person gets better, he gets better right? Isn’t that what health care’s goal is aimed at? Diving deeply into the unknowns and what ifs that often times surround unconventional medicine, Lydgate attempts to smooth the edges of the infamous black box placebo for the weary consumer. Again not advocating for one or the other, merely putting all the cards on the table and asking his reader to simple pick one.
A great summation quote for this constructive article is the following: “What is striking about the rise of integrative medicine is the way in which it manages to construct a sort of therapeutic power-sharing, marrying the magic to the medicine.” Yep. As far as I’m concerned life has a bit of magic in it already, some call it faith, come call it placebo, some call it passion, creativity… whatever, really. Ultimately it’s whatever floats your boat or keeps you high and dry, happy in the turbulance of life. I guess we’re all too familiar with this thought pattern in Portland because we’re all in it together, huddled indoors, out of the rain; and on the one hand it behooves us to keep healthy, otherwise we’re just asking to spread sickness, and on the other hand, we’re keeping it real, thinking up solutions to the rest of life’s challenges.
The synergistic dialogue between “magic and medicine” does hold powerful promises, it’s a step in the right direction creating a solution to the pesky problem commonly labeled as “universal health care.” We must admit that the people over here at Helfgott could not help but ooh and ahh over the contents therein, personally recognizing a few of the doctors and facilities featured. Giddiness would adequately describe the mood, as would a contented sigh of relief: finally!
I would personally recommend the read to anyone out there that can get their hands on the January 2008 issue in hardcopy format (it’s not available in a liquid form), so run to your grocer’s counter to flip through its thoughtful process and see for yourself the nitty-gritty details elegantly outlined inside.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Yes, the Top Doc’s 2008 issue was informative, although there still needs a bit of fleshing out of the topics involved.
Diversity is great, and with that said, I would love to see a few credentials after the docs’ names, to simply understand what modalities and background they stand upon. After reading the article, I had very little information about the specifics of the “top docs’” practice other than the areas of their interest/specialty. Perhaps a future article would include a few initials after the names to help the consumers know who they’re reading about.
… And you seemed to gloss over the fact that NCNM and Helfgott were barely visible for such a high-pressed event. Does the Portland Monthly Magazine know that you’re into the same avenues? Seems like a worthy connection to follow up on…
My two cents,
C. Biscuit
Nice thoughts, C. Biscuit! I agree that it would have been nice to see credentials, and specifically for me, what schools the docs graduated from. After reading about these great schools in Portland, I was really curious to see which school these great practitioners chose for their education, and was disappointed that this wasn’t incorporated into the article!
I also would’ve like to see them talk about the Classical Chinese Medicine program at NCNM. They covered the strengths of the naturopathic program and to not include something about the Chinese medicine program seemed a glaring omission…
Speaking of “learning to play nice”, it is interesting that, in this case, 8000 Portland-area physicians were surveyed and asked to vote for up to 2 top doctors. But, what types of doctors were surveyed? How were they chosen? Were ND’s asked to vote? I was never asked to particpate in an online survey. I understand that they didn’t survey every physician in the county, but if they only asked MD’s to vote, then they only get suggestions of the well known CAM providers who “play-nice”. Not that there is anything wrong with that, of course:), but I am much more interested in knowing, for example, who the chiropractic profession views as the best chiropractor, and not who MD’s view as the best chiropractor.