Yards Apart

If my grandfather Henry were around today I’m pretty sure he would shake his head in disbelief – there’s talk that Cal Berkeley and Stanford may join Notre Dame in the ACC football league – that’s the Atlantic Coast Conference, which last I checked isn’t near the Pacific.  I remember watching the famous Cal-Stanford college game with grandpa in 1982 when Cal lateralled 5 times through the Stanford defense and its marching band on way to the shocking last second victory.  Cal’s runner knocked over Stanford trombone player Gary Tyrrell in the endzone, which incidentally is partly why our oldest Jack didn’t join his college marching band - the other reason candidly about uncertainty about what the college experience was supposed to be. Having the two California schools join the ACC would be like when a western medical group or a hospital joins a health system out east, or when hospitals start moving their locations into people homes – wait, this is actually happening.  In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if by 2030 nearly every hospital system in the US had a hospital-at-home service offering. Hospitals and home health are at two ends of the spectrum – opposite points in the continuum – and just like the potential college football realignment, the question will be, will it work? “I’m pretty convinced it will if you can staff the heart and lung patients adequately and set up very good screening systems to head off infection – what I worry about,” Patty Joerns, MD, says, “is if this adds cost and avoidable mortality, the need for an ambulance back to the hospital during a cardiac event or sepsis.”  As we all get older the idea of better at home care makes sense and seems welcome and probably necessary. The idea of Stanford’s football team and marching band flying cross country in November to compete against ACC rivals like Miami or Florida State, maybe not a great idea.