What is Healthcaring?

As a behavioral definition, healthcaring taps into a positive disposition of people at both a conscious and subconscious level. It's defined as many, together in caring health and healthcare. The excerpt below is from HealthCARING: a Reset for Health and Healthcare.

Six attributes of healthcaring follow: the first three emphasize the individual and the last three center on its societal impact.

Healthcaring Cues Behavior — To cue is to prompt, as if on stage in a play. Definitions cue what we do, like dance steps in a choreographed routine, and guide what we, and others, sometimes shouldn't do. For example, language and environment cue us on what to eat, whether to exercise or not, and sometimes even prompt addictive alcohol or drug usage. Soon healthcaring will causally cue healthcare providers to improve patient contact time and to practice less defensive, more predictive medicine.

As healthcaring becomes ingrained in minds, it will drive autobehaviors toward a deeper caring for both our own health and more selflessly for the wellbeing of others. This involves more than empathy and compassion. It will influence a wide range of behaviors as both an underlying cue and a conscious reminder to act both with and in healthcaring.

Healthcaring Prods Cooperation — To prod is to promote, nudge, persuade, or advocate a behavior or conditioned response by others. The idea is that healthcaring will be used to draw out behavioral change in others in a given situation. 6 Introduction: Why "Healthcaring"? Why Now? Examples include health coaches and the prodding of patients, consumers and associations in ways that influence providers, payers and government toward actions with solid healthcaring underpinnings.

People use definitions in order to see what to do. This can be as simple as asking or being asked: is this a healthcaring action, process or situation; or how will we make conditions and circumstances unmistakably healthcaring? This will amplify and raise general awareness to improve our actions on bigger issues like cost and health benefits, healthcare administrative complexity, medical terminology and transparency, treatment routines and errors, medical procedural pricing fairness and service quality delivery.

Healthcaring Taps Positive Human Nature — To tap is to draw forth from a source. Like the naming of healthcaring itself, this individual quality is hard-wired inside minds. It's the positive side of human nature.

Consider how people think and what they say. A typical use for the phrase human nature is to describe the misbehavior of others, as in "Oh, that's human nature." We usually utter this to excuse, degrade or condemn some misbehavior or a disgusting slip-up. It is commonplace to lump all kinds of selfish, angry, harmful or destructive actions by others (or ourselves) under the banner of human nature.

In contrast, if it's a positive behavior from one to another (or others), then we describe it variously as being heroic, brave, compassionate, generous, altruistic, sympathetic, loving, caring, empathetic or some other positive and very specific descriptive word. We treat it as if it's an exception and rarely call these positive behaviors 'human nature.' Nor, more importantly, is there a composite word that groups and collectively describes these positive acts and actions.

Healthcaring Defines America's Destination — We describe in Chapter 2 of HealthCARING: a Reset for Health and Healthcare France's top-rated healthcare system. That's both a triumph and a destination the French take pride in maintaining. What then is America's healthcare destination?

A healthcaring America is an obvious destination. Healthcaring will help frame common objectives, create other supporting behavioral definitions and make clear next steps and best practices. And this is not merely about putting patients first or being humane and cost effective. It is a call to caring and a call to the best in health by co-creating ways to encourage others to flourish and for healthcare delivery to measurably improve. That's because health is as much a human experience as it is a biological fact. The payoff is that a clear destination makes individual, business and group decisions easier, particularly when they're large or difficult.

Healthcaring Improves Decision Making — Without healthcaring in place as a widespread behavioral reset and the encouragement of others, Americans have been left to their own devices with conflicting guidance on health-related decisions. That's because without a cultural norm or clear destination, even when people want to do what's right, they don't always know what's right or even how best to achieve better health or improved healthcare outcomes. And we're talking about decisions at all levels of society with a reemphasis on personal responsibility and sacrifice for the benefit of others. Said simply, healthcaring provides a litmus test to guide us toward healthier and more consistent decisions about our health and how healthcare should work.

If I adopt a healthcaring behavior, what should I eat, how much should I weigh and how often should I exercise? How can I raise exceptional children, become more at ease and productive, and contribute to a larger cause or a community? How does the product our company offers affect America's healthcaring goal and how do we become healthcaring as a 8 Introduction: Why "Healthcaring"? Why Now? business while encouraging those in our industry and community to do the same?

Healthcaring Inspires a Cascade of Change — As the idea of and practices around healthcaring become widespread, the general wellbeing of Americans (and other adopting societies) will improve. While there are only a few models of wellbeing (see Appendix 1 for both the European Union and Gallup models), guidance on the 'how' to make wellbeing happen has been missing. That's a void healthcaring and its associated behavioral definitions fill in.

How will this inspire me to be a healthy person? Where and when will healthcaring motivate organizations, institutions and government and its policy makers to take those actions that aid the growth and understanding of what it means to be genuinely healthcaring? Finally, and to strongly reaffirm, healthcaring will encourage a series of other supporting behavioral definitions, including those that already exist, such as preventive healthcare and positive psychology.

In a way that parallels large swaths of consumers and businesses now going green, initiatives for healthcaring need a factual foundation that is also emotionally motivating and inspiring. To stir up a passion for health and wellbeing takes the independent efforts and creativity of readers like you, and over time, the cultural acceptance of all.

Learn more in our book, HealthCARING: a Reset for Health and Healthcare.