A holistic approach to musculoskeletal healthcare is something that can help address disparities in health, according Mary O'Connor, MD, an orthopedic professor at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn.
Dr. O'Connor is a leader in orthopedics and co-founded Vori Health, a musculoskeletal care startup.
She spoke at the Becker's Spine, orthopedic and ASC virtual event June 15 about holistic care and healthcare disparities.
Here is an excerpt from the conversation. Access the full session here.
Question: Can you talk about the specific disparities in musculoskeletal disorders and care and the trends driving them?
Dr. O'Connor: That's a personal passion of mine. I chair the Movement is Life caucus, which is a national coalition of stakeholders committed to decreasing MSK healthcare disparities. What we know is the burden of osteoarthritis is higher for women than men, and it's higher in communities of color. We also know that there's an interplay between the social determinants of health and how patients receive care and their risk of getting disparate care. So it's a very complicated issue. I fundamentally believe that we have to look at how we're going to take wellness into communities and basically leave sick care for the healthcare system, because fundamentally we don't have a healthcare system because the country is not healthier.
The country is sicker by every objective measure. We spend more on healthcare. We have an obesity epidemic. We have a lack of physical activity epidemic. Everyone's getting more sedentary, heavier and less healthy. There's rising rates of diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and depression. So by all objective measures, the current healthcare system has failed the population of this country because we are not, we are sicker. We really need to embrace a different way of moving towards wellness.
Part of that can be in the delivery of care where we're supporting patients as we are at Vori Health with health coaches, to help them understand how they can make the behavioral health changes that will improve their health. It's going to improve and help them on their MSK journey as well. The amount of overlap that we see between mental health scores, poor mental health scores on our PROMIS 10 data and poor physical global health scores is astonishing. It's like a direct overlay. So when we're not looking at the patient more holistically, we're really missing an opportunity to help them get better faster, or stay better. So this is another aspect of where I think we really need to go in terms of transforming the delivery of care.