Last week Dr. Carl Hammerschlag spoke to the Idaho Hospital Association at the Sun Valley Resort in Ketchum, Idaho. He told an audience of hospital execs that it didn’t make any difference who won next month’s Presidential election because nothing could stop the cultural shift from the current healthcare model based on intervention to a new model of delivery based on prediction and prevention.
Dr. Hammerschlag spoke about the importance of healing in community; healing is about becoming whole, being restored to health, and community is a place where people gather to share their hopes and dreams. A community welcomes/ encourages/honors each individual’s unique contributions and where all support common goals. A community transmits to its constituents a sense of shared values, an ethic about how to walk a good road in this life.
He stayed over a couple of days to restore his spirit, in a picture post card community of healing. Young and old are encouraged to participate in what the community offers; walk, bike, fish, hunt, swim, skate, ski, and snow shoe; go to the post office and talk to your neighbors (there is no home mail delivery); go to the library, which has a great reading room with all the morning papers. This is rural America where people connect with each other and the land, celebrate their lives and honor their dead. We have a lot to learn, about healing, from this community!
