This Doc Tackles The Hypocrisy of the Healthcare Industry

Written by Mike Eisenberg

How many healthcare documentaries have you seen that expose horrible wrongdoing or evil corruption? There is collateral damage when filmmakers use fear as the main call to action for viewers, especially when it dissolves faith in our healthcare system. Filmmaking is a powerful tool, and I believe that if you want to make a difference with the people who could impact change, give them a reason to believe they can, not just that they should.

When we started production in 2015 on our first medical documentary, To Err Is Human, our mission was to show the work done behind the scenes to make health care safer and more reliable. To help the audience understand the stakes, we shared some shocking statistics early in the film, but once established there’s no looking back. We ended up with nearly 300 screenings across 12 countries and many hospitals making bold commitments to improve their safety measures.

In late 2022, we were approached by the Jewish Healthcare Foundation (JHF) about their pursuit of a documentary that shows the role of technology and innovation on patient safety in medicine. We told JHF that the positive approach to documentary filmmaking was paramount to us—we are not in the business of blame and shame, as so many in our field are prone to do. If we are showing people how technology can make health care safer, let’s do just that.

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For our new film, The Pitch, we introduce audiences to the heroes of healthcare. There is a macro problem in health care that stifles change, but we felt a unique opportunity to show what it looks like when people put forth the effort to break down the walls in front of them. Institutions highlighted in the documentary include Humber River Health in Toronto, Canada where a room of experts closely monitor data that comes directly from every patient’s bedside and the University of Pittsburgh, which uses groundbreaking genomic testing and machine learning tools to quickly identify infection outbreaks that commonly plague hospitals.

We also spoke with individuals such as a young entrepreneur on a mission to break through the many barriers that resist innovation in the frontier of patient safety. When the credits roll on our film, we know the audience will engage in a discussion that will likely end up there anyway, and I’d rather show them something they can’t see for themselves.

Audiences are not easy to find for documentaries. Some genres do have the benefit of a built-in target, like healthcare. With our film, the most direct impact is seen at the ground level with in-person screenings at hospitals, conferences, and healthcare organizations. Each one can be followed by a discussion, either planned or unplanned, that extends the 59-minute run time an extra hour and, if we leave the audience enraged and fearful, it’s less likely that they will have that discussion about what can be done to improve.

I know some would disagree with me. There’s no question that some of the most well-known documentaries of all time are aggressive exposés on the evils of the world. My point is that there is always an unseen price. In industries such as healthcare, documentaries have a unique ability to lift up those doing work that is often unheralded. Plenty of journalists will find the bad apples and the corrupt executives, but if you really want the system to pay attention and not shut the door on your message, make a film that shows what better looks like. I promise you’ll see key figures in the industry get behind it and share the film in a way that gets more viewers, and more importantly, more impact.