Several days back, we asked the question. What if we look at healthcare reform from the perspective of stakeholders. We made an attempt to identify those in our seminal article “Who CAN do What for A Better Healthcare System“.
We talked at certain level in our previous article about the role we as healthcare consumer can play for healthcare transformation. We appreciate your contribution to that.
Today, we are taking the discussion a step further. We are going to talk about and seek you comment about what should a care provider/caregiver do to transform healthcare?
In our original article, we identified following different stakeholders of healthcare transformation:
- Individuals/Consumers/Patients:
- Caregivers/Providers:
- Employers:
- Payers/Insurers:
- Clinics/Hospitals:
- Policy Makers:
- Industries:
- Pharmas/Drug Makers:
- Family/friends/Neighbors:
- Scientists/clinical researchers:
- Technologists/OEMs/HIT:
- Educators/Universities:
We believe this is a complete list of all those who can play a role in healthcare system.
What should a caregiver/provider do? How can they reduce cost, improve quality, improve performance? Following is a running list of some of the possible contributions.
- Follow the protocols to avoid infections and injuries.
- Prescribe what is needed, not what is wanted
- Spend time to understand holistic need of patients
- Not push a drug
- Proactively support medical studies
- Stay clean of financial ties so that they can provide objective opinion of drug performance
- Adopt cost saving technologies suchas EMR.
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11 users commented in " 2. What Can a Care Giver/Provider to Create a World Class Healthcare and Healthcare System? "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackPatients and health care providers (Professionals and facilities) make a positive contribution.
Policy makers, governments, lawyers, and financial intermediaries make a negative contribution.
In a perfect world the patient saves for his or her health care needs absent the need for government or financial intermediary intervention or compulsion. The patient and the Dr. then confer re: the best course for health care, and the patient makes the rational and informed decision whether or not to undertake the treatment. The only rationing is done by the patient and Dr. themselves based on a cost/benefit scenario to which they agree. No other inputs are necessary. The need for defensive medicine goes away, the need for profit and cost redistribution goes away. The procedure costs what it costs, not what it costs plus some level of profit for financial intermediaries and some level of redistribution to care for those who choose not to care for themselves. You choose what you get, and you get what you pay for.
This leaves a subset of people who truly cannot afford to pay the cost for subsistence level health care. They should be supported not by entitlement which requires no behavior judgement or modification, but by private charity, which requires that the beneficiary be deemed worthy. This strengthens the social compact. Entitlement weakens it.
At the center of this is the understanding that health care is NOT a right. We have no rights which are the work product of another. If we did, we would de facto enslave them.
So of the current ideas on the table to strengthen American healthcare, to me the obvious winners are private healthcare savings accounts and tort reform. The obvious losers are public anything including co-ops, and compulsory insurance.
Read Michael Porter’s book Redefining Healthcare. It’s an excellent guide to improve healthcare.
In the USA, Medicare for Everyone…
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Links:
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Andy,
Very true. I would be worried about a charitable system though…there are several grounds but the one that irritates me the most is getting several calls day for money and sometimes it is the same people who call few times a week. Cannot stop them!
Why can we not bring the good of public option and management of private to create even a better solution!
Or it has to be an either/or solution?
The FDA needs to get on board with research into alternative treatments for the big diseases of our time. There are doctors and scientists out there that have viable treatments that are being shunned, because they do not fit the “cut, burn, poisen” methodology. I am not just talking the Dr. Burzynski’s of the world, but scientists who have found dramatic breakthroughs with gene therapy, etc. If the FDA can for once focus on protecting and serving the American people and not catering to the profits of the pharma industry then we may see a breakthrough in healthcare. The true cures for disease cannot be obtained by the average American, because they are not “approved” therapies by the FDA and insurance companies will not cover them. Unless you are rich, you will not find better healthcare in this country…you will find status quo healthcare.
I would say 90% of the industrialized nations, most of the EU perhaps…all except for the USA the land of the free and the prosperous!
USA is expert is doing things backward, we have the world’s best doctors and surgeons, the best medical equipments, the best hospitals….and the BEST system for anyone who has a NASTY, SERIOUS condition…u know, those conditions that’ll kill you soon in other nations.
BUT,
In order to GET one of these NASTY conditions, most likely you’ll need to LIVE in USA and have NO BASIC health insurance. Like being a student who feels there is something in her breast and she avoids showing it to someone, because she has no health insurance and she CAN’T afford the crazy cost…several yrs later, she is diagnosed with stage 3 cancer, and she’ll then get the top of the line care from some organization that is perhaps being sponsored by our TOP drug companies, and THEN, she’ll out live most of stage 3 cancers of other nations ( if there are any in other nations due to their BETTER life style & BETTER preventative basic free health care)…and she’ll die later….we are EXPERTs in cheating death…I know someone who died just like that.
Many of these NASTY conditions that we are so proud we are experts of are preventable or treatable with a high success rate if detected early. Also, MANY of these conditions ONLY develop in a life style like the one in the USA, couch potato, full of junk & simple carb garbage we are encouraged to eat THX to our TV ads. NO country with the right mind out there ever import meat/food from USA, due to our nasty practices of hormone injections, etc.
USA needs to follow the RATIONAL way healthcare system is set up in other countries or it’s our end.
I would much prefer the irritation of solicitations from private charity than the irritation of having the fruits of my labor taken from me by the government and distributed to someone who feels “entitled”, and is ungrateful when receiving the “entitlement”. Enough is never enough. More than enough won’t be enough. It is time that people who need help actually have to ask for it and actually have to be thankful for receiving it. I know of no other option than private charity for that.
If by “the good of a public option” you mean the competition it would create, I’m all for creating fair competition (assuming that we can’t eliminate insurance altogether as we should). But you can’t compete fairly when one option is subsidized by the taxpayer and all other options are private. So a better way to create competition is to lift the restrictions on cross state policy sales. Let the insurance companies in all states compete against each other for the business of all Americans. That would be the second best idea. Still, with intermediaries you won’t drive down costs, because the direct relationship between the service and it’s cost is broken with a third party payor. “Ten dollar aspirins aren’t my problem. They’re my insurance companies problem. So keep ‘em coming”.
Insurance for all, & Education on preventable diseases & good health education in schools. If the above is done then – standardize treatment protocols uniformly across the country & make certification of knowledge of healthcare professionals mandatory. These are the best way to reform healthcare in India.
If the question is really asking how we make healthcare services better, then let’s ask every professional healthcare certification organization and healthcare facility to teach and require proficiency in the skills necessary to continuously evaluate clinical and business processes to insure we are practicing evidence based care and performing our business processes efficiently and cost effectively.
Let’s transparently share our knowledge and successes with one another for the benefit of everyone.
Andy Avery, you’re my hero…why is forced charity better than voluntary? I still ask…if this is at a critcal mass then why are we waiting until 2013 to enact and collecting taxes on it beginning in 2010? Another example of not getting what we pay for from the federal crooks in D.C.
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