I am frustrated!

I attended a conference recently at which a highly respected group of health leaders formed a panel discussion. One participant was CEO of a large HMO, another vice-president of human resources at a major corporation. The third is the CFO of a city government as well as the leader of a large community health insurance purchasing group and the 4^th the CEO of a group health care practice.  The moderator was the CEO of a state’s health purchasing consortium covering hundreds of thousands of insured workers. Sounds like all the necessary players to tell us how to solve the health care cost crisis. Indeed, they discussed many ways to contain health care costs including the well known like increasing employee contributions, increasing co-pays and greater discounting of providers.  They also talked about capitation of providers, single payer systems, accountable care organizations and other innovative approaches to health care delivery. No one mentioned the word  PREVENTION.

Nor did they talk about the fact of much of what they suggested amounted to nothing more than cost shifting expenses from current payers to the workers.

They also talked about the increasing rate of medical errors and the impact on cost and quality of care. They did not mention that perhaps the increasing volume of work and the decreasing number of health care workers (fewer nurses/patient), fewer doctors in practice relative to volume growth, the vast number of medications prescribed and not enough pharmacists to fill them safely etc as perhaps contributing to increased medical errors.

Nor did they talk about the major impact on costs of new technology and many new costly pharmaceuticals.  Chemotherapy to slow down the process of dying costs a fortune. We can reduce acute death from a heart attack by stenting the occlusion in the coronary artery AND we can do it again next year when he/she has another one. No one mentioned the word  PREVENTION.

If we compared data from 10 years ago and now in terms of the number of doctor visits, number of blood tests, number of prescriptions, number of X-rays, CTs, Ultrasounds, MRIs etc, I think we’d all be shocked at the explosive growth.  How are the costs of this going to be reined in by any of the things the panel recommended?  YOU have insurance and will continue to demand everything be done when you seek medical care.  Right?

If you follow this blog, you know that I believe prevention is the only thing that will actually make you healthier and keep you healthier and out of the health care system where all those dollars will quickly be spent.

The key think they should have been discussing at this conference was how to MOTIVATE people to change their behaviors to make them healthier. This is not difficult to do.  Several other articles on my blog discuss this and my book goes into it in great detail.  Start taking better care of yourself today!

Gerald L. Evans, M.D.