“The future influences the present just as much as the past.” — Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

As our nation’s health care system continues to undergo fundamental changes, both patients and doctors alike wonder how they will be affected. While the sweep of health care’s growing pains will not be known for years, the accompanying fear and uncertainty should never interfere with health care’s delivery.

With this in mind, Not So Much Foundation provides information and education so individuals can familiarize themselves with many of the processes and procedures involved in health care today. The Foundation also provides information designed to strengthen the relationship between hospitals and the communities they serve.

Not So Much Foundation created the Local Hospital Project to help individuals increase their preparedness for a medical emergency, while educating them about what to expect in the event of a hospital stay.

Should a medical emergency occur, the way in which an individual reacts may save lives. Similarly, the ways in which a community interacts with its local hospitals over time may save the emergency health care system.

If communities can be taught to reduce the number of “non-emergency” hospital visits, while at the same time encouraging very sick individuals to seek immediate medical attention, their hospitals will be better prepared to provide more efficient, higher-quality service in the long run.

“A good many thoroughly informed men and women have a feeling that every hospital in the land should be architecturally as good as modern science can make it, and that the equipment should include all that medical science can call for in the diagnosis and treatment of disease; that hospitals which cannot have all these advantages should close their doors, and the work which they are attempting to do should be turned over to hospitals that are properly built and well equipped.” – The Small Community Hospital, by John Allan Hornsby, M.D. (1917)

In addition to understanding the health care system around you, there are many opportunities to learn from past health care practices, especially as we create the roadmap to where our system stands in modern times. Not So Much Foundation’s new series Lost Hospital highlights some of the health care institutions of yesterday as we head toward the future.