We Built a Sick-Care System. It's Time to Build a Healthcare System

Dr. Russell H. Greenfield urges changes to payment models, professional education, and measures of success to help Americans achieve lasting health

WHITTIER, Calif., Oct. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Russell H. Greenfield, MD, Founding Executive Director of The Institute for the Advancement of Whole Health at Southern California University of Health Sciences (SCU), is calling for healthcare leaders, educators, insurers, and policymakers to align how care is financed, delivered, and evaluated with the goal of helping people achieve and sustain health.

Read Greenfield's full perspective, "We Built a Sick-Care System. It's Time to Build a Healthcare System."

The call comes as U.S. healthcare spending reached $5.3 trillion in 2024, or $15,474 per person, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Yet the United States ranked last overall and in health outcomes among 10 high-income countries in the Commonwealth Fund's 2024 comparison of healthcare systems.

"We have become highly proficient at paying for healthcare services. But what would it take to pay for health?" Greenfield writes.

Greenfield points to a disconnect between incentives that historically reward visits, tests, and procedures and the sustained support people need to stay healthy. A patient with uncontrolled diabetes, for example, may also face food insecurity, chronic stress, and limited opportunities for physical activity. Addressing those circumstances requires time, resources, and payment structures that support care beyond an individual appointment.

Whole Health places a person's goals, values, relationships, and daily circumstances at the center of care. It combines conventional medicine with prevention, lifestyle approaches, evidence-informed complementary practices, and support for self-care, with healthcare professionals working across disciplines and in partnership with patients.

Making Whole Health more widely available, Greenfield argues, will require changes across the healthcare system—including payment models that support prevention, education that prepares clinicians to collaborate, and research that identifies which approaches improve outcomes, for whom, and at what cost. He also urges broader measures of success that account for health, function, well-being, and quality of life, alongside the treatment of disease.

"The future of American healthcare depends not simply on how well we treat illness, but on how effectively we help people achieve and sustain health," Greenfield writes.

About The Institute for the Advancement of Whole Health

The Institute for the Advancement of Whole Health at Southern California University of Health Sciences brings together leaders across healthcare, education, research, and policy to advance a Whole Health system that prioritizes prevention, well-being, and person-centered care. Learn more at scuhs.edu/institute.

SOURCE Southern California University of Health Sciences