Last month, my lemon-y self landed me in the hospital for a brief stretch. I’m not going to go into the mind-numbing details about my medical leave, but what I learned as an admitted patient taught me a lot about communication.

Throughout my time there, I endured daily visits from cardiologists, surgeons, internal medicine specialists and more (I honestly lost track) who asked me the same questions their peers did. Every. Day. For 10 days.

The way hospital communication appears to works is this: Doctors don’t talk to each other. They ask the patient questions and then write their expert notes and opinions in the system under the patient’s file. Then, the next doctor comes in, reads the other doctor’s notes, and then makes their own judgment.

I don’t know about you, but this whole telephone game with my life felt a little uneasy. Making decisions based on electronic notes didn’t feel like the best approach. We all know how easily misunderstood words can be, whether it’s in an email, text message, or even an article—anything can be easily misread. And the interpretation of the content is in the eye of the beholder, so … good luck, I guess?

With all this extra time on my hands, naturally, I thought about process and communication at work. What if, rather than kicking off a project face to face, we just communicated digitally? And what if it wasn’t a conversation that we interacted with in real time, but rather, we read each other’s perceptions and ideas and plans of action about a project and proceeded with our own expertise to build and solve for the best answer based on our knowledge alone. In a vacuum. Without ever having a conversation to clarify, elaborate, share ideas, and problem solve. Together. Everyone only reads notes from one another, but no one actually discusses the content to fill in gaps, ask questions, and streamline the final product.

Crazy, right? Buildings would not be stable and cars would not run. Can you imagine what planes would be doing?

No man is an island. You cannot just take something and build your corner of the thing, and then think it’ll fit with everyone else’s thing without ever having a dialogue. I don’t know why the health care system communicates the way it does, and I’m sure there are reasons beyond my understanding, but, no. That is not how things should work.

I am not going to solve the health care communications dilemma in this post, but I can say this: Stop, collaborate, and listen because success starts with learning, understanding, and working together.