Dr. Peter J. Weiss

When the Beat­i­tudes Cam­pus was founded in 1965, it was con­ceived to be a place where older adults could live, learn, and grow through all the days of their lives.

Today’s treatment-oriented health­care sys­tem tends to focus on the dis­ease or ill­ness while for­get­ting about the per­son with the dis­ease.  This is a big mis­take.

William Osler said, “It is much more impor­tant to know what sort of a patient has a dis­ease than what sort of a dis­ease a patient has.”  I think many of you who’ve had close encoun­ters with health­care recently would agree that we need a lot more car­ing for the per­son with the dis­ease.

The begin­nings of the Beat­i­tudes can be traced back to a visit by the pas­tor of the Church of the Beat­i­tudes, Rev. Dr. Cul­ver “Bill” Nel­son, to a nurs­ing home of the time. The appalling con­di­tions Rev. Nel­son wit­nessed com­pelled him to join forces with other church vision­ar­ies, includ­ing Rev. Dr. Everett B. Luther, to cre­ate a wel­com­ing retire­ment liv­ing com­mu­nity. The ded­i­ca­tion to this vision was so great, the young church con­gre­ga­tion decided to build the Cam­pus before they built the church sanc­tu­ary because the need was so great for com­fort­able, car­ing, and afford­able retire­ment liv­ing to meet the needs of seniors with mod­est eco­nomic means. After con­sid­er­able dis­cus­sion, the con­gre­ga­tion voted in Feb­ru­ary of 1962 to spon­sor the Beat­i­tudes Cam­pus of Care. The first res­i­dents moved into the South Plaza Build­ing, known then as Build­ing “B,” on May 17, 1965. Three months later res­i­dents moved into the “Lodge” now known as Plaza View Assisted Liv­ing. The North Plaza, Gar­den Apart­ments, Health Care Cen­ter and Ari­zona Room fol­lowed and were com­pleted in 1969.

That’s why it’s so nice to see this arti­cle in today’s New York Times about Beat­i­tudes nurs­ing home, a place where more care and less “treat­ment” is the rule.  It’s a won­der­ful story about car­ing, help­ing and lov­ing as opposed to diag­nos­ing, test­ing, treat­ing and man­ag­ing.

Please make some time to read it, think about the issues and draw your own con­clu­sions.  I think you’ll see what I mean.

What would health­care be like if every­one involved had this out­look?  If every patient was seen as a per­son first and not as a prob­lem, diag­no­sis or chal­lenge?  How could that hap­pen?  What can I do?  What can you do? Good ques­tions all.

First, real­ize that the Beat­i­tudes model wasn’t a happy acci­dent.  As you can tell from the name, Beat­i­tudes is a faith-based orga­ni­za­tion and its faith guides its out­look and behav­ior.

Now I’m not say­ing every care provider must be faith-based, but I’ve writ­ten before about how med­i­cine has become a big money busi­ness and that’s a large part of the prob­lem. Car­ing can’t be leg­is­lated; it can’t be just another busi­ness met­ric; it has to come from the heart.

We can’t force peo­ple and insti­tu­tions to change their hearts, but we can invite them to do so.  For our part as indi­vid­u­als, we can seek out car­ing providers — providers that see the per­son not the dis­ease.

We can reject the “big­ger is bet­ter,” “newer is bet­ter” and “more is bet­ter” health­care model.  Change starts with us.

Thank you Beat­i­tudes for show­ing us the way.