HJAR Mar/Apr 2024

DIALOGUE 16 MAR / APR 2024 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS now. Safety, obviously, for our patients too, but safety for our workers. It's a different world and a different environment out there. When I look at emergency preparedness, I'm looking at safety for our workers. We also have the solar eclipse coming upApr. 8, which doesn't, maybe, sound like emergency preparedness. We are right along the path of totality; it's going right through Arkansas and right through Mountain Home. Campgrounds are full. Our hotels are full. So, if you're planning to come, bring a tent and plan to sleep on the side of the road. That means that our popula- tion could increase tenfold. So, how do you get an ambulance through a traffic jam in Mountain Home, Arkansas? How do you take care of the influx of people who'll be coming to our emergency room? How do you plan and prep for those types of events? We always keep on our radar, with the ice storm just recently, what's going to happen with the weather, whether it's ice, a tornado, or snow. Those are probably our key priorities, right now in that area. Editor Do you think the U.S. healthcare system is broken? Peterson I think that there are a lot of places that we could change and reemphasize. I believe that we still have one of the best healthcare systems in the world. Even when I look at some of the statistics and some of the data, I think that, in all honesty, depends upon what you call the healthcare system. I think because of how sick our population is, we actually have a better healthcare system than most places in the world. What I think we need to start looking at is what type of food is allowed, or what types of products are allowed in our food here in America. There are a lot of countries where things that are not allowed in the food are allowed here in America, and they play, I think, a key indicator on our health. We may have a great healthcare system, but if you don't actually go backwards and shut the water off, then it doesn't help if you continue mopping the floor. I think that we need to look more over- all at what's going on in the environment and with the water that we drink, whether it's BPA in plastic bottles or the preserva- tives that we eat in our foods and whether all we have access to is fast foods. I hate to point fingers. One thing that we've done at Baxter Health is to partner with a restaurant here in town to come up with a healthy alternative on the menu and promote it for “Healthy Heart Month.”The more little things like that that you can change in the environment to make it easier for people to have access to healthier things, the more exercise pro- grams and things like that that you can offer, the healthier the population is going to be. When I look at, "Is our system broken," it's probably, "We need to shift our empha- sis a little bit." As far as the healthcare sys- tem goes, I'm still very proud to be a part of it. I still believe that we have one of the best healthcare systems in the world, but I do believe that we need to change the environment that we live in day in and day out. There's no way that you can keep up with the problems in the world if you don't change the environment. Editor Do you think it's part of, or should be part of, your hospital's mission to change that exterior environment? Maybe it's thinking outside the box a little bit in having the foundation start a restaurant or a co-op grocery store that has low-cost, good, organic food. Peterson Right, I think that we can be a key part. With population health, emphasis on the primary care, the doctor, is trying to have care managers and finding out what's happening in individual homes. I do believe that we're expanding into that area as a healthcare industry, and even as a healthcare system. But I honestly don't believe we can do it by ourselves. We're going to have to have help from the government. We're going to have to have help from restaurants. We're going to have to have help from a lot of different industries. The food industry — the flour that we buy, the dyes that we eat, just the processed food — is incredible. I'm part of it. I eat it every day because it's easy, it's accessible. But I really believe that's going to have to change if we want to see true and dramatic changes in our healthcare system. Editor I hope we see that in our lifetime. Thank you again for the time, we're in leadership now to hopefully to make that happen, not to continue putting a band- aid on the solution that we haven't solved. Peterson You are welcome. We are, and you're right — a lot of it starts with what type of chemicals can go into our foods, and, unfortunately, there's a lot of them. Editor Yes, there are. n