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Home › Healthcare › The New ‘Normal’ Is Not 98.6

The New ‘Normal’ Is Not 98.6

06Jun
Green KeyHealthcare

December 22nd, 2020

When mom took your temperature and decided that at 98.6 F you were fine, she might very well have been wrong.

She was relying on a 150 year old standard that a growing number of studies are finding is too high by about a degree.

It’s not that German physician Carl Wunderlich was wrong. It’s that the average body temperature has declined since he first published the figure in 1868.

“Our temperature’s not what people think it is,” said Dr. Julie Parsonnet, a professor of medicine and health research at Stanford Medical School. “What everybody grew up learning, which is that our normal temperature is 98.6, is wrong.”

She and a group of her colleagues earlier this year published an analysis of body temperature trends in the US since the Civil War. It confirm what other studies found — our body temperature has been going down for decades. They determined the body temperature of men born in the early to mid-1990s is on average 1.06 F lower than that of men born in the early 1800s and that of women of the same time periods is on average 0.58 F lower.

The researcers offered a number of possible reasons for the decline ranging from better hygiene and healthcare to lower rates of inflammation and improved diets. Even modern heating and air conditioning were mentioned as contributing factors.

Now, a study of an indigenous population of forager-horticulturists in the Bolivian Amazon has come up with similar findings.

Published in Science Advances, a multinational team of physicians, anthropologists and local researchers found that over 16 years of study the average body temperature among the Tsimane declined by .09 F a year to a current average of 97.7 F.

“In less than two decades we’re seeing about the same level of decline as that observed in the U.S. over approximately two centuries,” said lead researcher Michael Gurven, UC Santa Barbara professor of anthropology and chair of the campus’s Integrative Anthropological Sciences Unit.

Though the Bolivian Amazon is thousands of miles and a lifestyle away from the US, the researchers suspect some of the same factors may be responsible for the declining body temperature. Health care has improved and infection and inflammation have been reduced.

Said Gurven, “It’s likely a combination of factors — all pointing to improved conditions.”

Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash

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Before you send out that survey or report or memo no one will pay attention to, do what psychologist Randy Garner did and attach a Post-it to the cover with a quick personal note. You’ll be surprised at the response it gets.

Garner did that just in a series of experiments, doubling his response rate to a survey. The psychology professor at Texas’ Sam Houston State University found that the mere presence of a Post-it on the cover page prompted substantially more responses. Adding a personal note to it increased responses even more. And those who got the personal Post-it were faster to return the survey and were more complete in their written comments.

Even when he tested to see if survey length would have an effect, Garner found that a personal message on the sticky note upped the response rate by 500%. While a 5 page survey got a higher response rate among all three groups — no Post-it, Post-it no message and personalized Post-it — adding just a sticky note alone improved the return rate from 13% (no Post-It) to 40%.

In reporting his research in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, Garner said, “These results suggest that the Post-it generally tends to operate at a somewhat subtle level. When the task is more demanding, however, the personalized Post-it appeal may call greater attention to the personal nature of the request and figures more prominently in a decision to complete the task.”

Discussing the implications of the experiments for business in a Harvard Business Review article, author and psychologist Kevin Hogan said adding the sticky note, even without a message, personalized the appeal creating a “sense of connection, meaning, and identity.”

Garner’s experiments, Hogan observed, showed that “if a task is easy to perform or comply with, a simple sticky note request needs no further personalization. But, when the task is more involved, a more highly personalized sticky note was significantly more effective than a simple standard sticky note request.”

It’s a good lesson the next time you want people to notice and act on that report or memo. Simply add a Post-it and a quick note.

And to make it even more personal and more effective, Hogan says, “Adding the person’s first name at the top and your initials at the bottom causes significantly greater compliance.”

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Already undergoing challenging and sometimes painful changes, the global healthcare sector can expect more of the same in 2020 and for some time beyond. But these changes also present opportunities says a 2020 outlook from Deloitte.

The drivers of the the sector’s transformation are many: “A growing and aging population, rising prevalence of chronic diseases, infrastructure investments, technological advancement, evolving care models, higher labor costs amid worker shortages, and the expansion of health care systems in developing markets.”

The Deloitte outlook examines four broad categories of change:

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While each of these is already in play, some pose greater difficulty. Globally, and especially in the US, “health systems are struggling to maintain financial sustainability in an uncertain and changing environment.” While righting the financial picture will be different from country to country, Deloitte notes “a few of the options could be payment reform, universal health coverage, pricing controls, population health management (PHM), and public-private partnerships (PPPs). Industry consolidation and a changing regulatory landscape also are seen as influencing factors.

“Health system leaders will likely need to employ a balanced mix of these levers in 2020 to deliver high-quality care and achieve financial sustainability.”

Employers will continue to deal with a shortage of healthcare professionals. “A widening demand-supply gap of skilled professionals is creating immediate challenges for public and private health system,” says Deloitte, describing rising demand in developing countries and shortages almost everywhere.

Deloitte especially sees no easing of the demand shortfall of nurses and doctors, calling it “particularly acute.” If anything, the report suggests the shortage in the US and in Europe has the potential for getting worse.

Countries are experimenting with different approaches to easing the shortages including adoption of AI-enabled diagnostic tools, free medical school tuition in exchange for working in underserved areas and broader and faster adoption of remote medicine technology and even repatriation incentives.

Ultimately, “Health systems need to consider new methods to source, hire, train, and retain skilled workers to achieve.

Photo by Myriam Zilles on Unsplash

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