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Move Away From Health-Cost Reform
President Obama should move the conversation to health-care reform rather than health-cost reform. Costs will never be controlled until we control and systematize the underlying infrastructure of fragmented, disassociated care. Identify and articulate specific activities such as:
1. Standardize the electronic medical record so every patient's chart can be accessed electronically from any computer with permission.
2. Implement tort reform
3. Fix the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA)
4. Fix the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA)
5. Pull apart the fake number of "48 million" uninsured (the real number is closer to 10 million hard-core uninsured.)
6. Address the access problem before requiring the current broken provider structure to absorb millions of new patients. By that, I mean turn primary care over to nurse practitioners, nurse midwives and physician assistants and encourage current primary care doctors to go on into specialty care.
7. Stop assuming that only doctors can increase access to care or be heads of medical homes (which should be called health care homes) There will never be enough doctors. Utilize and incentivize other health-care providers to increase access to care and provide scholarship support and assistance so that the debt load of doctors, nurses and other providers is not staggering.
8. Allow health insurance to be purchased across states so that consumers can comparison shop for better prices and for increased opportunities for choice and competition.
9. "Right-size" regulations and get rid of state-by-state impediments to practice for non-physician providers. Federal pre-emption might be the only solution.
10. Go slowly. Identify areas of consensus that are fixable and fix those first.
Unless the above happens, it is very unlikely that health-care reform will occur and all we will be doing is blaming each other for the out-of-control costs.
By
Colleen Conway-Welch
|
August 31, 2009; 11:02 AM ET
| Category:
Electronic medical records
,
Health Care Reform
,
Health costs
,
Insurance
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Posted by: patrick_f_dye | September 1, 2009 2:31 PM
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Collen.
I believe you have lost sight of the real issue and become embroiled in the political knock about. There is more than enough evidence to demonstrate their are well over 40 million without any medical coverage, on top of this figure, there are currently over 60 million people with exclusions on their current health insurance. These are facts and you seem to want to now start talking about other issues to deflect the argument over health care reform. I would strongly suggest you question why America is one of the worst countries in the civilized world for taking care of its own citizen’s health. Once you have addressed this, then and only then can we move forward.
France, Germany, United Kingdom, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, all these country’s make our health care system look like something from the 1920's, why? They all have some form of health care programme funded through taxation, and all have a dual system of private insurance running alongside. If you were to offer the 40 million people with no health coverage and 60 million with exclusions on their health insurance a public option, then you would actually reduce the costs significantly. The medical profession as a whole needs to address its own woeful short-comings, and get its own house in order. After all, you don’t need congress or the senate to sort out electronic medical records, the Hospitals and primary care doctors have the tools and the means to do this themselves. Why try to pass the buck to Washington, just get on with the job and do the simple thing now
Posted by: AnnaNurse | September 1, 2009 11:13 AM
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"Colleen" sounds more like the dean of a business school than a nursing school.