Our mission is to draw upon the unique credentials of health care professionals as both care recipients (either directly or indirectly) and subject matter experts to promote the changes needed for aligning our medical system better with chronic illness care. Our message to policymakers and health system leaders--If professionals working within the health care system are having serious problems with getting care for themselves and their families, then the system is failing in a major way.

Many health care professionals involved in aging and chronic care encounter the very problems they are trying to change when seeking care for themselves, their loved ones, or friends. One might expect that professionals would be adept in using the system they work in. If they are having serious problems with getting care for themselves and their families, the system is failing in major a way. When these “professional consumers” are coping with their own chronic illnesses or those of family members, they experience the very insults of contemporary health care that form the agenda for health care reform. Proposed in response to his own encounter with the long-term care system, Robert L. Kane, MD, shares his rationale for creating such an organization - “Whenever I describe my own painful experiences in getting the long-term care system to work effectively for my mother’s care, people nod immediately and offer up their own war stories. This conversation has been repeated often enough to make me believe it is time to use these experiences as a catalyst for changing our current health care system."