Curing what ails ya

Can NWA institute reform medical world?

Without a doubt, Alice Walton has committed herself to a mission —transformation of the fundamental nature of health care — that might even raise questions of whether the deep-pocket resources of a billionaire will be up to the task.

The youngest off- spring of Walmart founder Sam Walton and his wife, Helen, Alice Walton is often listed as the richest woman in the world and in the top 20 of the wealthiest people on the planet.

With almost inconceivable levels of wealth, it’s hard to believe any goal to which she’s committed might be out of her reach. We’ll say this for her: She doesn’t think small.

The people of Northwest Arkansas know that already. Building a regional airport from scratch in a field in Highfill, Arkansas? Alice Walton was instrumental in making it happen and it’s known today as Northwest Arkansas National Airport, a facility that has dramatically influenced access in a region where business growth for years was limited by a lack of it.

Create a world-renowned, architecturally admired art museum? The haughty art world certainly embraced its doubts that an heir to a discount store fortune might create an extraordinary facility in a Bentonville ravine. Though it’s possible to still find some of that coastal snobbery about the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, its collection and 10-year record of exhibits have earned respect. But transform health care? Alice Walton a little more than a year ago announced the creation of the Whole Health Institute in Bentonville, a sort-of think tank with a mission to change health care across the nation. Current practices in the medical field promote reactions to health problems rather than collaboration on healthy living, the institute’s founder suggested. That wastes money and produces a system that should be able to produce a better U.S. life expectancy than 37th in the world, Walton said as she announced the institute.

Then, in January, the institute announced Walton’s plans to build an independent, nonprofit medical school in Bentonville known as the Whole Health School of Medicine and Health Sciences. The school is planned to open in 2024.

The school of medicine, according to Walton, will promote a “reimagination of American medical education that incorporates mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health, the elements of whole health, to help people live healthier and happier lives.”

Today’s health care system has its ills. Patients in many cases are well trained to think of doctors and hospitals as last-ditch responses to what ails them rather than collaborative components of lives well lived.

Of course, there will be doubters. Mention “whole health” and some reflexively become dismissive, reducing its advocates to cartoonish, crystal-loving shamans meditatively stacking stones along a bubbling brook.

It’s like doubters believing an airport in Highfill might only become a landing strip for private Walmart jets or that an art museum in middle America would feature only cowboy art and paintings of dogs playing poker.

Tackling health care is a monumental task. It’s a system so huge, so complex it represents nearly a fifth of a U.S. economy measured in trillions, not billions.

Can its ultimate reform really arise from Northwest Arkansas?

That’s what Alice Walton appears to be prescribing. Given her history on other projects, this institute and school of medicine probably aren’t something to sneeze at.