Healthcare System Version 999.0

Learning from our own mistakes is maturity.

If the healthcare system were software, we’d be running version 999.0 by now — an update built by improvements to the failures of the last.

But instead of debugging itself, the system has entered a phase of patching the interface rather than the architecture. In my country, that means endless arguments about a 50-cent increase in the bulk-billing rebate, as if marginal tweaks could correct a deeply misaligned operating system. There are, of course, vested interests in maintaining the status quo — and the natural inertia of mature decision-makers and stakeholders whose careers depend on stability rather than disruption.

It isn’t working.
We are in the midst of a chronic disease epidemic despite record and unsustainable healthcare expenditure — not a return on investment that anyone should find attractive.

Version 1000.0 must be the version where we finally grow up as a system — where we replace defensiveness with curiosity, hierarchy with humility, and conformity with courage. That begins with respect: for peers who challenge orthodoxy, for whistleblowers who reveal uncomfortable truths, and above all, for biology itself — the only true authority in health.

Progress in medicine is about having the humility to keep asking questions and looking for answers together.