When Healthcare Becomes a System Instead of a Relationship

A personal reflection from a Connected Health patient

My husband is in his 30s. He’s a former college basketball player, stands just shy of seven feet tall, and spent years pushing his body through rigorous training, workouts, and competition. Unsurprisingly, his back has paid the price over time. Add to that the reality of his height, long hours at a desk, and chasing two little boys who see Dad as their personal wrestling partner, and it’s no surprise his back has been an ongoing challenge.
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A few weeks ago, while doing some work in our basement, he threw his back out—and this time, it was bad. He couldn’t walk. He couldn’t drive. He was stuck in bed, barely able to move.

I called his primary care office. Or rather, I called the centralized scheduling line because there isn’t a direct office number to reach his care team. I explained the situation to a scheduler who didn’t know my husband, hadn’t seen his chart, and had no relationship with him.

I said, “He can’t walk. This feels urgent.”

His primary care doctor has treated him for back issues before. He knows his history. I assumed that mattered.

The response? The first available appointment was Thursday… and today was Friday. And it wouldn’t be with his doctor, but with a PA. When I asked when his actual physician could see him, the answer was three weeks.

Three weeks.

When someone can’t walk.

I was advised to take him to the hospital’s walk-in urgent care instead.

So that’s what we did. I wheeled my husband into urgent care. We waited. We were seen. The providers were kind and professional. They ran general tests, ordered an X-ray to rule out a disc issue (thankfully negative), prescribed a steroid, and referred him to physical therapy. We were sent on our way with a paper prescription to fill at a grocery store pharmacy because there was no pharmacy on site.

Everything that happened was technically “correct.” And yet, the experience felt cold. Impersonal. Transactional.

No one knew him. No one had context. No one from his primary care office knew this was happening—even though we were in the same building!

As a patient of Connected Health, the contrast was impossible for me not to notice.

If this had happened to me, I would have texted or called my doctor directly. Within minutes, I would have had a response and a plan in place. Whether that meant medication, imaging, a same-day visit, or coordination with another specialist, someone who knew me would have been guiding the process from the start.

We’ve simply experienced the healthcare system differently. I tend to manage our family's medical appointments and have seen firsthand how complicated and frustrating traditional care can be. When I had the opportunity to become a Connected Health patient, it felt like an easy decision for me. My husband hadn’t needed to look at care through the same lens until this experience.

After it was all over, he said something that stuck with me:

“My doctor is great. But the system is backwards. You told them I can’t walk, and they said they can see me in seven days. That doesn’t feel right. It feels inhumane.”

This isn’t about blaming individual providers. I truly believe most clinicians are doing the best they can within a broken system. From my perspective, healthcare has become a maze of phone trees, scheduling lines, and disconnected departments, and as a result, patients fall through the cracks.

What this experience reinforced for me is that healthcare works best when it’s built on relationships. When your doctor knows you, answers you, and helps navigate care in real time, not days or weeks later.

Sometimes it takes living the difference to truly understand the value of it.

And sometimes, unfortunately, it takes being stuck in bed, unable to walk, to realize that “good enough” care isn’t always good enough.