Threads and Yarns: Weaving the Tapestry of Comorbidity

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
S any weaver knows, the elegance of a fabric lies in the yarns, not the threads. The whole is lots more than the sum of its parts. In health services, the threads are the diagnoses on which interventions are based. How these threads are spun into yarn (the under- lying biodynamic of the tapestry of health) is poorly understood, to the detriment of efforts to understand the genesis of health problems and the interventions associated with them. Part of the problem is the impera- tive to "sell" diagnoses in order to market the interven- tions associated with them. Those who make their living by focusing on diseases resist understanding that health is a pattern. Without grasping the pattern, man- agement is at best an approximation of adequate care. Tinetti and Fried1 explained why the assumption