Out With the Old, In With the New

2024 — what a year it has been. And so much more lies ahead for us, for our patients, and for the entire healthcare system.

Throughout the year, we have met with obstacles large and small, trying to do our best to take care of our patients. And our patients are doing the best they can, trying to help themselves, their loved ones, and their communities get and stay healthy.

So many people work every day to rise to the challenges that our patients and our fellow healthcare providers face, helping them overcome local and systemic barriers to getting and giving good care. Issues around health equity, health literacy, access to care, systemic bias, and the nuts and bolts of getting through the day make trying to achieve ideal health an incredible challenge. We are blessed to be able to partner with our patients, our colleagues, and our institutions to move things forward, to continuously try to innovate, and to recognize when something isn’t right and needs to be changed.

For the most part, everyone is trying to make things work with whatever resources they have, trying to find a better way. What is going to be the thing that makes a difference, that flips a switch and helps an individual patient or a whole population move their health to a better place?

We have looked at ways to prevent and decrease burnout, and examined new tools to help us address the bureaucracy and paperwork burdens of trying to do our jobs. We have suggested ways to tweak the electronic health record to help it work for us more than against us, and turned a hopeful eye to new technologies such as AI, virtual assistants, and voice recognition to ease burdens in healthcare. None of us have all the answers, but the excitement that comes with continuing to ask questions, challenging the status quo, and always being a voice calling for everyone to do the right thing makes this job worthwhile.

Over the past few years, we’ve tried lots of different things; some have worked, some have not. Sometimes we ask the wrong questions, and sometimes we have an idea that makes just the right difference at just the right time.

In this incredibly challenging and stressful world, things will continue to change at a rapid pace. The political landscape ahead promises to bring about changes large and small that we will need to address. Some changes will help and some will not; some we will need to work with and others we will need to fight against. We will all need to learn to keep working within the system and find the right ways to battle against it when that is what’s called for.

So, as this year wraps up, and a new one is set to begin, I hope that we all remain steadfast and excited — and a little bit terrified — about what lies ahead, and what we can do to fix this fractured healthcare system we love so much. And I hope we never stop trying.

Here’s to a healthy and happy 2025!