Remaking healthcare again
Hospitals are barely keeping up with the last round of changes in healthcare, but already there are people calling for another overhaul. In an online piece in the New England Journal of Medicine, names better known from government — Thomas Daschle, Pete Domenici, William Frist and Alice Rivlin, now leaders of the Bipartisan Policy Center Health Care Cost Containment Initiative — riff on a report they released in April, "A Prescription for Patient-Centered Care and System-Wide Cost Containment."
It contains 10 recommendations. Some are out of the ambit of hospitals and other healthcare organizations to consider and rely on government will and Congressional acquiescence to implement. An example of those kinds of solutions are suggestions to alter accountable care organizations and the SGR formula for physician reimbursement so that there is more incentive for Medicare providers to participate in new payment models and to create a standard minimum benefit for Medicare Advantage plans.
Several, however, would involve healthcare organization participation, such as consolidation of quality measures, study the potential cost savings for preventive medicine, and figuring out ways to deliver services to dual-eligible patients through a single program.
The entire piece can be read at http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsb1306639.
