John Sharp is an IT Manager for a major medical center in Northeast Ohio. Areas of expertise include: ehealth, personal health records, Web 2.0 technologies, social media and project management. He is active in the Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society and the American Medical Informatics Association. The opinions expressed on this blog are those of the author.
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Posts Tagged ‘Health Care Reform’
Declining Marginal Returns of Complexity
June 21, 2010
Just completed the book The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter, an archeologist. The focus of the book is on civilizations like the Roman Empire and the Mayas but it made me wonder about the complexity of health care and whether we are at the point of declining marginal returns. It is apparent from the health care reform experience that competing stakeholders make any attempt at reform a complex and nearly impossible process. Clay Shirky wrote a blog post in April on The Collapse of Complex Business Models. Just like societies which become too complex to respond to major stressors. While I am not predicting the collapse of health care in the US but one must wonder whether some of the complexity could be simplified by the experience of other countries, such as, single payer systems and an emphasis on primary care (medical home). Would be interested in other opinions, especially from those who have read the book.
Models of Care: Can They be Copied?
January 28, 2010
Can good models of efficient care be emulated in other hospitals. Much has be touted about the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic and others. The lower costs of these models has been documented. See the Dartmouth Health Atlas report on chronic care (see table on page 9).
In a video on Huffington Post Video last month, the interview at the Cleveland Clinic about the successful EMR still questions whether this success can occur elsewhere. Yes, the implementation was expensive and expensive to maintain but the benefits over paper are quantifiable in terms of quality of care and improved outcomes. Maybe the lessons of successful EMRs have paved the way for others.
Finally, Dr. Cosgrove, CEO at the Cleveland Clinic is interviewed by Fox Business News at the Davos World Economic Forum. He again repeats his contention about the need to address obesity and health care costs. Again, a model or approach to care and costs which others can emulate.
Medicine: Cottage Industry or Post-Industrial Care Process?
January 21, 2010
In the New England Journal of Medicine this week there is a health care reform piece titled, “Cottage Industry to Postindustrial Care — The Revolution in Health Care Delivery.” The article, by leaders in health care quality, raises significant questions about the problems in health care delivery and a path to a solution through “standardization of value-generating processes, performance measurement, and transparent reporting of quality.”
The authors address concerns about “cookbook medicine” but rightly describe medicine as a cottage industry: “Services are often highly variable, performance is largely unmeasured, care is customized to individual patients, and standardized processes are regarded skeptically. Autonomy is hardwired into the system, because most physicians practice in small groups with limited oversight or coordination.”
How do we move to post-industrial care or even better, 21st century, technology-enabled, patient-focused care. Does that mean that small practices should join large practices, academic medical centers? The authors don’t propose that solution, but do propose following clinical practice guidelines which are flexible enough to manage individual differences in presentation. If medicine is trending toward broad implementation of clinical practice guidelines and a stronger focus on outcomes (value-based medicine), technology-centered particularly around the electronic medical record and a focus on efficiency, can small practices survive? Are will moving toward industry consolidation much like what has been experienced in banking?
The cottage industry of medicine with fee-for-service as a funding model, continues to drive up cost without adding value. While I am no economist, I believe medicine is changing and models of practice which focus on efficiency, technology and patient experience are taking the lead.
One final quote from the article: the authors characterize this cottage industry as chaos – “Chaos confounds constructive action, whereas wise standardization is a foundation for effective variation, efficiency, reliability, and rapid innovation.” Let’s hope that wise standardization through guidelines can promote the kind of rapid innovation needed to transform healthcare and that policy and funding decisions follow this direction.
Why Michael Porter Makes So Much Sense
December 17, 2009
Last night I heard Michael Porter speak at the Cleveland Clinic. Author of Redefining Healthcare, among other books, he drove home his approach to value-based competition in health care. He has many quotable, provocative statements on health care:
- fee for service model is toxic to improving health outcomes
- Competition must be based on results.
- Competition should center on medical conditions over the full cycle of care.
- Results information to support value-based competition must be widely available. (aka, disease registries)
- increasing value actual reduces cost.
He also reemphasizes some basic principles that are strongly backed by evidence – high volume regional medical centers typically have better outcomes that low volume centers. But he acknowledged that consumers must realize that local care may not be the best care for especially for complex conditions. Do you want to get your total knee replacement at a hospital which does one a week or 1400 per year? Not that volume is everything but consumers need to have the data available to make wise choices, outcomes data in particular.
He admitted some disappointment in the current health care reform because it does not change the incentives toward value-based competition. See How Reform Went Wrong.
Simplifying the Complex: Healthcare Reform
August 11, 2009
As the debate heats up on healthcare reform, the Obama administration has now put out a Reality Check to counter the negative campaign against reform addressing both rational concerns like the benefits and burdens to small businesses and some irrational ones. Perhaps what is needed is a way to simplify the message of this complex reform without diluting it or dumbing it down. How about 10-12 areas of reform put into one document (aka, talking points), which summarize the key areas that the reform will take, such as,
- access to insurance including removing exclusions for preexisting illness
- consumer protection
- healthcare IT including PHRs and Health 2.0 and meaningful use
- cost controls
- quality outcomes including comparative effectiveness
- how it helps business and the economy
Such a document should include no buzz words or government 3 or 4 letter abbreviations, such as, ARRA. Some of this is already on the HealthReform.gov website but the President should try to break this down more consistently.
Finally, keep the patient at the center of healthcare reform – see this Health Populi post on the challenges.
Peter Neupert on Healthcare Reform
June 10, 2009
Peter Neupert of Microsoft writes an article for the the Washington Post titled “Diagnosing and Treating the Health Non-System. ”
He discusses three “diseases”:
- Access (too many uninsured people)
- Value (too much spending for the health results delivered)
- Ignorance (at every level – who really pays for health, misaligned incentives, true costs, quality measures, transparency and more)
He focuses on value and notes that innovation is not occurring in health care “because of the inflexibility in the payment system and misaligned incentive.” Particularly, innovation regarding the management of chronic disease which accounts for 70% of medical cost.
There will certainly be alot of discussion on realigning incentives to pay for outcomes rather than volume in the upcoming healthcare reform debates. It is long overdue.
Change Health Care
December 2, 2008
Here’s a good idea – change health care. This may be one of the promises of the new administration but it is also a website to help consumers and insurers with dealing with the cost of health care and healthcare decisions. The concept is a social network for employers and employees to share their healthcare experiences. Checkout the free ebook: My Healthcare is Killing Me available on the site.
World’s Best Healthcare?
August 14, 2007
In the Sunday NY Times, a major editorial on the current sorry state of healthcare in the US was sparked both by Sicko and by a report from the World Health Organization. It covers the usual complaints we have all heard before: insurance coverage, access, fairness, healthy lives, quality, life and death, patient satisfaction. Use of information technology is noted also as lagging other developed countries with lack of coordination of care.
In my mind this is as much an insurance issue as a technology issue – silos of information by for-profit insurance companies which will not be shared to coordinate care. Single payor makes sense but will be a tough sell without more lobbying reform as well.
I am glad that at least one editorial page is bringing this forward.
