Rebalancing Medicine

Health systems around the world are struggling. How have we ended up in our current difficulties and what are some better ways to deliver health and care? Even the best of technical and scientific medicine can only improve the probability of a good outcome and not guarantee it. So how do we make decisions in the face of such uncertainty? How can we possibly afford the ever-increasing costs of care? And how do we restore trust between patients, health care professionals and governments? Rebalancing medicine is about health and social care, the balance between access to care for acute illness and the approaches used for prevention, about the limited effectiveness of health care in the face of social determinants of health, about helping people with multimorbidity and polypharmacy better, about overdiagnosis and overtreatment, about harnessing the best of great science and technology, and about supporting a tired and dispirited health care workforce. There is enormous complexity, and therefore there are no simple solutions. But in the face of complexity, some things are better than others. And there are some great stories along the way.