From that experience onward Patch Adams has devoted his life to the study of what makes people happy. Patch and his colleagues practiced medicine at the Gesundheit Institute together in West Virginia that way for 12 years in what Patch refers to as their 'pilot project.' In that time, they saw 15,000 patients.
If you think that all sounds like a utopian impossibility, it isn't. Allopathic doctors and practitioners of alternative medicine will work side by side in Patch's model. Doctors and patients in his model relate to each other on the basis of mutual trust and patients receive plenty of time from their doctors. He believes that laughter, joy and creativity are an integral part of the healing process and therefore, true health care must incorporate those aspects of life.
