America has this paradox of excellent biomedical science, innovative drug manufacturers and entrepreneurial device developers along with outstanding providers but at the same time has a dysfunctional care delivery system. A new vision is needed.
Vision is a leadership concept that presents an idea, garners support and then develops the coalitions to bring it to fruition. America needs to envision what its care delivery system should be and then determine, as ...
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Technology to lower costs rather than accelerate them. Smart phones to increase physician and other providers’ productivity. Fewer primary care physicians but more involvement by nurse practioneers and others. And increasing appreciation of the value of integrative medicine. These are but a few of the disruptive changes in care delivery that are coming.
I have posted concepts on how the health care delivery system will change in coming years – quite ...
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Ours is a provider-oriented system. Doctors like me and (former) hospital executives like me hate to admit it but it is true. Consumerism will slowly but surely drive it toward being a patient-oriented service model. What do patients and their families want from the health care delivery team? First and foremost is respect followed by service given in a high quality, very safe manner. Patients expect that the information gap ...
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There will be some very disruptive and some transformational changes in the way health care is delivered, not as a result of reform, but as a result of the drivers of change described in a previous post on KevinMD.com. They included an aging population, an obese society, shortages of doctors, and emerging consumerism, among others.
I interviewed in depth about 150 medical leaders from across the United States to collect ...
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Fed up with our health care delivery system? Maybe even angry? What should a person do? What can a person do?
I recently wrote a post on drivers of change in health care delivery such as the aging population, adverse lifestyle behaviors, shortages of physicians and developing consumer expectations. I planned to follow up today with what those drivers will produce as change in the delivery system. But a commentator responded ...
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More chronic illnesses, more diseases of old age, consumers demanding more quality and safety, physicians no longer in typical private practice, and high deductible health care polices are each about to cause major changes in the practice of medicine and how it is delivered to patients. Will this come about smoothly or, more likely, with some serious hand wringing?
Health care delivery will change substantially in the coming years. This is ...
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Ever been put on hold when calling your insurance carrier? Or had so little time with your physician that you could not discuss everything you thought was important?
Our care is generally good in the United States but not as good as it could be nor as good as it should be. There are multiple problems to consider.
First, ours is a medical care system not a health care system. It is ...
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An excerpt from The Future of Health Care Delivery.
We Americans like to pride ourselves on having the best health care system in the world, but unfortunately that is not the case. We have a medical (that is, sick) care system—a system that waits until we become ill before it kicks into action—instead of a health care system focused on helping us stay healthy. We give lip service to prevention and, ...
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As Americans we believe we have the best healthcare system in the world. But think again, it’s really not the truth. We do have superb medical schools, very well trained providers, superb science and technology but the delivery of medical care is just not what it should be. We spend more for healthcare than any other country does on a per capita basis.
And yet when we compare ourselves to other ...
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We have a real paradox in American healthcare. On the one hand we have exceptionally well educated and well trained providers who are committed to our care. We are the envy of the world for our biomedical research prowess, funded largely by the National Institutes of Health and conducted across the county in universities and medical schools. The pharmaceutical industry continuously brings forth life saving and disease altering medications. The ...
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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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