In this episode of Humankind, travel with us to a revolutionary health clinic in Kansas City, where the staff is beloved by the community for a distinctively caring, responsive approach to medicine. At Family Health Care everyone makes eleven dollars an hour, including the doctors, making it possible to subsidize low-cost care. This helps foster an egalitarian atmosphere among the staff where everyone feels important. Patients are asked to pay a portion of their bill either financially or in-kind, based on their household income, and no one is turned away when they can’t afford to pay. In the second part of the program we hear from the founder of the clinic, Dr. Sharon Lee and learn why she started the clinic, and her belief that caring for patients, and treating them like people — not numbers — is the direction that medicine must take.

Themes

• Why would a doctor take the same salary as the janitor who cleans the clinic?
• What would health care be like if we placed people before money?
• Why is it important for doctors to take their time with patients, to help them better understand their cases?
• What can doctors do to change the factory-like system so common in health care?

You know you’re not just a number. You know they really remember who you are, and there’s a very warm feeling no matter how busy or how hectic it is in the clinic when it comes down to you, you feel like you count.”

—Jan Cohick, a patient at Family Health Care in Kansas City, KS