It's always nice to have a trip to San Diego in the middle of heat wave. Got on the plane in Nashville Sunday at 10:00 a.m. at 92 degrees and climbing, with high humidity—and deplaned in San Diego three hours later at 70 degrees and very little humidity. But you're not reading this for a weather report.
I'm here because the American Hospital Association's Leadership Summit is being held here, and for some reason, they kick the thing off bright and early on Sunday.
I got here too late to attend the early sessions, but in time to catch the first keynote speaker, Tom Brokaw, who needs no introduction.
As a septuagenarian, he pretty much gets to do what interests him these days, and what interests him is the divisiveness that paralyzes our public discourse, our politics, and even our interpersonal relationships—at least that was my take on his talk.
I was curious about what one of the biggest news personalities of all time would have to say about healthcare, and I wasn't disappointed—he has eight physicians in his family. More on that soon. But as you might imagine, Brokaw started by tackling a bigger subject than healthcare.
"What happened to the America I thought I knew?" he asked, rhetorically.
For a man who lived through and covered 1968, with its race riots, Vietnam, and the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., that's a pretty damning question all by itself. "Have we become so divided that we are headed for a crash landing?"
He used a medical analogy to describe the problems we're facing as a nation.
He likened the country to a patient who has arrived at the emergency room after undergoing a massive trauma. Experts, including various medical specialties are all there, and as the patient is suffering in the ER, they refuse to talk to each other because each of them is so egotistical that each thinks they know best how to treat the patient's problems and that their solution is the only one that works. Meanwhile, the family is aghast as the patient suffers and his condition weakens.
The problem: we're the family, and the politicians are the doctors who refuse even to communicate with each other—much less find a compromise solution that will get the patient back on his feet again.
"We have become more divided than united," he said.
We owe more than that to the men and women who serve in today's military, he says. We are now fighting two of the longest wars in American history, and only about 1% of the population has had to make any sacrifices. When they get back, he says, they must ask themselves, is this what we're defending?
We owe more to them, our children, and to the future of this country than to wallow in our differences, he says.
Brokaw reaffirmed his belief in American exceptionalism—the belief that we are the world's beacon of opportunity, but that notion is in jeopardy.
He told a story of three exceptional public servants, senators Bob Dole, Phil Hart, and Daniel Inouye, all of whom recovered together after receiving grievous wounds in the Second World War. They resolved together to dedicate their lives to public service, after growing up in the Depression only to be sent off to fight two of the biggest military powers the world has ever seen in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
Despite political differences, the three senators managed to work together, as did dozens of others in postwar America. Now that spirit of cooperation has been lost.
Brokaw told of a conversation he recently had with two young congressional staffers, friends who worked for a Democrat and Republican representative respectively. The two friends get together to eat, drink, and talk politics frequently, finding that they agree more than they disagree. Meanwhile, their bosses, the purported leaders of this country, refuse to be in the same room with each other.
Brokaw encouraged healthcare leaders to avoid the same trap. He encouraged various healthcare stakeholders to work together with rivals to increase value and transparency.
"How can you work together to help people?" he asked. "It's not about tech bells and whistles and ordering tests."
That will prove a shining example to the rest of us, he says, who need to "re-enlist as citizens."
On Monday, I expect to be able to report on some of the success stories of those efforts as we get further into the conference.
Philip Betbeze is the senior leadership editor at HealthLeaders.