In facilitating the business of healthcare, I see many good things happening. The Oregon CCO experiment is on the right path. Electronic Health Records now provide critical infrastructure and we are starting to see new payment models. Universal health insurance coverage is improving. There is less fragmentation. Simultaneously, however, cost continues to climb and the most important workforce—healthcare practitioners—are becoming demoralized and abandoning the active practice of medicine. Despite all the hard work and good intentions, healthcare management today is on a collision course with reality.
The unusual cost of healthcare is blamed on new technology, faulty education, uncooperative consumers, bad habits, malpractice, corporate greed, income inequality, and the list goes on. These are important cost drivers across all of society, yet in the general economy we don’t see cost so out of control. Technology, as an example, creates value and increases productivity while lowering cost (the personal computer and development of the internet are prime examples). So we need to ask some questions. Why don’t we see what’s happening in healthcare everywhere?
[For more of this story, written by Michael Rohwer, go to https://www.thelundreport.org/...bout-how-things-work]
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