"Maine officials and health care professionals know of ways to make the delivery of health care more efficient and reduce costs, but political agreement is difficult. One preventive approach, however — where health care providers focus on the underlying reason for an illness instead of only treating the illness — should not be a difficult political lift and deserves greater recognition and implementation in health care circles....
"Another approach worth pursuing more is trauma-informed care. Studies have shown that when doctors identify a patient’s childhood abuse or emotional trauma and recognize that it contributed to the patient’s health concern, patients end up not needing their doctors as frequently. The approach requires physicians to make a change in the way they practice medicine.
"In some cases the correlation between childhood trauma and disease is profound, as Vincent Felitti and Robert Anda learned in their Adverse Childhood Experiences Study....
"The approach affected health care utilization. After examining more than 100,000 patients who participated in the new medical evaluation, the researchers saw a 35 percent reduction in doctor office visits in the year after the evaluation compared with the year before. They also saw an 11 percent reduction in emergency room visits.
"A trauma-oriented approach that focuses on the connection between patients’ biological and psychosocial development seems like a relatively simple idea. But sometimes simple ideas can have a great effect...."
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