Time after time--Health policy implications of a three-generation case study

Conventional wisdom holds that the redesign of health care requires stepping back from the issues of individual patients and analyzing patterns of outcomes and costs for large patient populations. As practicing primary care physicians, we think a useful, complementary perspective might result from doing the opposite: looking intensely at the health and health care of an individual but widening the lens through which that patient is viewed. We wanted to consider a patient's entire life story — and more.