Not In The Mood

So Dunder Mifflin character Ryan once told his new boss in The Office to just “lead me – but when I’m in the mood.…to be led,” which reading it here makes Ryan seem a bit difficult to manage if you ask me. Actually, he sounds like my older kids home for break who say things like “I’m fine” after I ask them to scrub the dishes, with actual soap. Ryan’s words may be from a sitcom, but they are no joke to doctors and nurses trying to move the needle with chronically ill patients, like those with mental illnesses that keep them from functioning. In one of our recent polls, 79% of physicians said the hardest thing about taking financial risk in medicine and meeting value-based goals is that most patients aren’t in the mood to change. “I candidly have a tough job leading patients to goal,” admits Dr. Joerns, a cardiologist, “because I can only do so much…. the patients have to show up, acknowledge their disease, and adhere to what we say.” They need to be in the mood for health care like Ryan supposedly needed for inspiration at work.  And like apparently my kids need to be inspired I guess to put the actual trash bag “inside” the barrel, as opposed to just next to it. “Wait,” my 21-year-old said, “you wanted it in the barrel.”