The following is part of a series of original guest columns by the American College of Physicians.
by Steven Weinberger, MD, FACP
“Effectiveness” has become a buzzword these days in discussions about healthcare reform. It is often accompanied by different preceding modifiers, such as “cost” or “comparative,” each conjuring up different images in the minds of physicians, patients, insurers, and the pharmaceutical industry. Some say that cost effectiveness and comparative ...
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One of the reasons why large, integrated health systems are able to hold down costs is because they put their doctors on a salary.
This divorces payment from volume of care, which is one of the major criticisms of a fee for service system. The pros and cons of such a system can certainly be debated, but the point is that it will be difficult to make such wholesale ...
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Hospitalist Bob Wachter comes up with a nice analogy explaining why health spending is soaring. Apologies for the block quote, but this should be read in its entirety:
You’ve just moved to a new town and stroll into a restaurant on the main drag for lunch. None of the large tables are empty, so you sit down at a table nearly filled with other customers. The menu is nice and varied. ...
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Peter Singer confronts rationing of medical care head-on two weekends ago in a piece in The New York Times.
It's gained plenty of traction within the blogosphere, but none better than hospitalist Bob Wachter's opinion on the issue. In his take, he channels Joseph Stalin, saying, "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”
And that's really the driving force behind the mindset against rationing ...
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The following is part of a series of original guest columns by the American Medical Association.
by J. James Rohack, MD
Physicians know first-hand the frustrations of caring for patients in our broken system and also the joys of patient care that get us out of bed before the sun rises. The AMA is committed to getting health reform this year – so that the joys can again outnumber the ...
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It's no secret that one of the keys to cutting health care costs is changing the way doctors are paid.
One proposal that has been used in some integrated health systems, like the Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania which uses a similar model, is to not pay for complications. Known as the Prometheus model, the system proposes that "half of the costs from avoidable complications must be paid for by ...
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When it comes to preventing Medicare's so-called "never" events, sometimes the solution is worse than the problem.
I wrote about it last year in the USA Today, saying, "While withholding payment for inexcusable medical mistakes is a sensible concept, Medicare’s decision to penalize hospitals for more nuanced complications raises the bar too high. You cannot regulate perfection."
And preventing patient falls has nuance written all over it.
The New England Journal of ...
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The American Medical Association recently gave unqualified support to the House health reform bill, H.R. 3200, and that is drawing the ire of some of their supporters.
To be sure, H.R. 3200 is the most left-leaning of the proposals, and there is clear ideological opposition to the so-called "public plan," which expands the government's role in our health care system. It's a tremendously sensitive topic, with some expressing their outrage ...
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Well, that was fun.
This past Friday, I participated in Health Care Reform: Putting Patients First, an event put together by Better Health's Dr. Val Jones. It was an impeccably organized gathering, and provided medical bloggers a valuable opportunity to discuss health care reform. Great timing too, given the fact that two major reform bills were introduced earlier ...
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The following are my prepared remarks at Health Care Reform: Putting Patients First, held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on July 17th, 2009.
President Obama recently declared that, "We are not a nation that accepts nearly 46 million uninsured men, women, and children." And indeed, finding a way to provide universal health coverage to every American is one of the focal points in today's health care debate. ...
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"A comprehensive and extremely useful roadmap for doctors."
-Eric Topol, MD, author of The Creative Destruction of Medicine
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