Updates from the Leader in Medical Travel

Bad News: HealthCare Costs on the Rise

October 11th, 2011 · Health Care, Healthcare, Kaiser Family Foundation, Medical Travel

The big news in the health insurance world last month was the release of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s 2011 survey on employer benefits and premium levels. As a respected non-partisan, non-profit research organization, KFF’s analyses carry weight and credibility in the policy world. And this year, the news wasn’t so great.

The average premium for family coverage rose nine percent, to just over $15,000. To put this into perspective, coverage cost about $7,000 in 2001. To make things worse, over the last decade, this doubling of insurance premiums has overtaken the increase in wages – only 34 percent. In the last couple of years, the rise was very modest – only three percent in 2010, for example. This huge nine percent jump has set off the fire alarm in the health policy world, raising questions about the efficacy of the health reform bill and the ability of businesses to recruit new workers, and raising speculation about what might have caused such a spike, whether it was a one-time increase or if we are sitting on the brink of a rollercoaster.

There are a few different ideas out there. Some of the reform provisions, such as the expansion of family coverage until age 26, widened preventative care, inclusion of those with pre-existing conditions, mean that insurer simply have higher costs, which they offload onto customers through higher premium payments. Some suggest that insurers are simply building a cushion in expectation of the higher costs that await them down the road. These costs will take the form of reform-mandated investments, such as insurance exchanges and quality improvement programs, as well as marketplace realities, such as hospitals consolidating and charging higher prices and people seeking more care whenever the economy begins to thaw.

Many variables still remain for businesses out there. A big one is workforce age: a firm employing young, single, healthy workers may see a moderate or negligible increase in premiums; those hiring older workers with more complicated health circumstances and one or more family members could be in trouble.

At HealthGlobe, we’ve been able to design customized solutions for some of our corporate clients interested in building out a more affordable delivery network into their benefits scheme. This includes our domestic affiliates. who manage conditions related to chronic illness, such as weight control, and/or our international centers of excellence where customers achieve 50-70 percent cost savings. The emphasis is on flexibility and convenience – medical travel is not the best solution for everybody. With rising prices, a changing workforce and diversifying corporate profiles however, a center of excellence approach that includes medical travel as a high-quality, low-cost option will soon start to turn the heads of some employers.  Here’s a link to a video of HealthGlobe’s Founder and CEO Jeff Carter discussing what we sometimes call “Focused Medical Travel, but really represents the “Center of Excellence” approach.

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Obsessing over Data and Quality at Anadolu Medical Center, Turkey

September 15th, 2011 · Anadolu Medical Center, Medical Travel, Patient Centerdness, Patient Centric Medical Care, Quality Improvements

There is a lot of talk about the emerging field of “quality” in medical travel. Over the summer during my travels to Turkey, I got to sit down with the man responsible for this at Anadolu Medical Center. Anadolu is one of HealthGlobe’s premier hospital partners, and has developed a reputation for their high quality offerings and pervasive quality culture. Among other notable achievements, they’re partnered with Johns Hopkins Medicine, been twice-accredited by Joint Commission International, and been recognized for their world-class oncology treatment.

Mr. Murat Sümer is the man in charge of ensuring this high success. As he explained to me, his title  (Strategic Planning and Performance Improvement Manager)implies  that Anadolu is focused on far more than quality as it is defined in the US. It is telling that their location both poses unique challenges to their efforts, while provides them an opportunity to meet standards of excellence in multiple regions of the world. Dr. Sümer and his team are not simply looking to attract foreign patients through jumping through hoops – they are constantly looking for ways to improve their own accountability and performance:

“We don’t think of it as just quality; we call it performance strategy because it’s about more than quality. Performance comprises environmental safety, occupational health, medical quality, patient safety, patient satisfaction, among maybe a dozen other focus areas. We have intradepartmental committees formed around each of these functions. For example, representatives from medical, nursing, patient-care, IT and other departments form committees for each of those functions. There are members of my team on just about every one of these committees to ensure that measurement, reporting and process improvement strategy is part of all operations.

We have been evolving our Strategy/Performance management systems. For example, we’ve instituted a Dutch web-based intranet reporting tool for adverse events at the end of last year. We send monthly data reports to our Johns Hopkins partners in Baltimore, who conduct a yearly in-person audit. We’re also looking at partnering with a US agency to benchmark our results on a handful of measures. (Note – Unlike in the US, where we have a dozen or more governmental and private agencies who put out standards, report cards and performance benchmarks, Turkey lacks the same environment. Much of their improvement work is self-driven and self-motivated.)

We currently operate fluidly between three quality improvement frameworks: Lean (increase efficiency and remove waste) Six Sigma (remove variation in all operations), and Constraint Management (understand and manage bottlenecks). We have the accreditations that everybody knows about in the US, but because of our location, we also comply with European standards. For example there are a host of international standards and metrics (ISO) dealing with both medical and organizational performance, and several European performance benchmarks with which we are compliant. Because the Turkish ministry of health has not extended recommended standards or benchmarks as is the case in the US, and also because there are patients coming from various regions (Europe, US), Anadolu follows several of these protocols.”

Mr. Sümer clearly leads from deeply held convictions about the importance of a disciplined approach to using data to improve medical care.  The results at Anadolu confirm that this approach is bearing fruit.

Article by Naveen Rao. Naveen is a health care blogger focusing on insurance and health care policy, information technology and health2.0. Naveen is currently touring the world in search of fun.  Luckily for HealthGlobe, he finds fun in visiting hospitals and physicians when he can.  He most recently lived in Washington, D.C., where was a consultant on quality improvement and compliance to several health care organizations. You can contact him at naveen.rao@myhealthglobe.com or follow him on Twitter @naveen101.

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On the Rise: Cardiac Care at Anadolu Medical Center

September 6th, 2011 · Anadolu Medical Center, Cardiologist, Cardiology Center of Excellence, John Hopkins, Mayo Clinic

While Anadolu Medical Center has gained prominence for its world class oncology facilities, and while our InVitroGlobe division has been HealthGlobe’s most active Turkish engagement, there is a new world class specialty arising out of Istanbul: Cardiology.

This is not to say that Anadolu’s Heart and Vascular Department has not always been phenomenal. Now however, their work is crossing over from being known as just one part of a JCI-accredited, Johns Hopkins-affiliated institution to a stand-alone Cardiology center of excellence. The department’s focus is both broad and deep, covering an expanding host of treatment options in several subspecialties, while making commitments to academic research and measurement-driven improvement principles.

The health care options offered at Anadolu are what you would expect from any top-tier US or European hospital. The full service pediatric heart center has evolved as a premier cardiac facility, drawing families from beyond Turkey to seek the best treatment and surgeries for families, whether they are infants with congenital heart defects or young patients with heart conditions who are transitioning into adulthood. One of the many highlights of my visit was watching an infant hooked up to an IV at the outdoor café energetically throw his plastic utensils at his parents, who were clearly happy — despite the assault.

Other innovations include:

  • A cardiac catheterization lab for start to finish cardiovascular interventions, from diagnostic testing to surgical interventions
  • An electrophysiology lab for novel non-invasive techniques for arrhythmias (irregular heart beats) as well as procedures in conjunction with catheterization, balloon ablation or other techniques.
  • Advanced imaging capabilities such as multi-slice, three-dimensional computerized tomography (CT) angiography

When it comes to medical travel however, it is not merely medicine that will eventually stretch Anadolu’s foreign patient base across the Atlantic to the US; It is measurement. The trend in medical travel mirrors developments in US health care policy to measure health care outcomes to determine which health care is effective, safe, and of high quality. At Anadolu, measurement and reporting of mortality, complications, blood usage rates, volume of procedures and other metrics are part of the standard procedures. The man behind these efforts Sertaç Çiçek, MD, a professor in cardiovascular surgery and a former resident at the Mayo Clinic, Texas Heart Institute and USC Children’s hospital. He is a no-nonsense man with a straightforward approach to his work: Be the best and use data to become even better. Under his leadership, it is easy to see where Anadolu’s success comes from.

Despite some bumps in the road, corporate groups from self-insured employers to health plans continue to revisit the idea medical travel because of the tremendous cost advantage and the ability to invest in employee wellness. Now, demonstrable quality data are beginning to show that overseas hospitals like Anadolu are capable of providing the same standards of excellence with regards to patient safety and surgical outcomes. It will only be a matter of time before medical travel benefits begin to grow in the US.

Article by Naveen Rao. Naveen is a health care blogger focusing on insurance and health care policy, information technology and health2.0. He currently resides in Washington, D.C., where he is a consultant on quality improvement and compliance to several health care organizations. You can contact him at naveen.rao@myhealthglobe.com or follow him on Twitter @naveen101.

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HealthGlobe Insights #2: Executive Medical Screenings for All!

August 16th, 2011 · Executive Medical Screenings, HealthGlobe Center of Excellence PPO, Medical Travel, Wellness

We know that top executives at major corporations go through detailed medical examinations.  Usually this is a requirement of their corporate by-laws.  Why?  Well the sudden loss of a top executive can be devastating to a company’s business performance.

But there are a great deal of important employees at the next level down.  And at the level below that.  In fact, since all employees are hired to perform a specific task, can today’s lean organizations really afford not to support their employees desire to live healthy and productive lives?  Check out our video on Executive Medical Screenings:

 

 

Executive Medical Screenings can cover a wide variety of tests including optional radiology tests that can include full body scans, etc. A more extensive physical examination can be part of a medical screening.  Additional blood tests can also be part of a medical screening offering.

Organizations are now working with HealthGlobe’s Centers of Excellence PPO to add Executive Medical Screenings instead of or in addition to the medical benefits they are providing. The Executive Medical Screening program gives the employee a great deal of information about their personal well-being that can allow them to take action to improve previously undiagnosed conditions.  They may find indicators that the employee can act on now in order to avoid a serious medical condition in the future.

Investments in wellness and long-term health allow employees to be more productive and live longer, but also can create lower overall healthcare costs for employers.

Some groups start with smoking cessation programs, some start with wellness and exercise programs. Executive Medical Screenings are great because they give the employee the baseline necessary to know where they may have health concerns in the future so that they can spend the time today to fix those issues.

Takeaway: As you consider ways to improve the health of your employees and improving your bottom line.  Implementing an Executive Medical Screening program can be an inexpensive but highly effective investment in the well-being of your employees that can have many long-term benefits in terms of retention and lower healthcare costs.  Visit HealthGlobe to learn how.

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The Right Stuff: A Visit to Anadolu Medical Center, Turkey

August 8th, 2011 · Anadolu Medical Center, Health Care, Health Policy, Istanbul, Medical Travel, Medical Travel in Turkey, Patient Centerdness, Turkey

Last week, I had the privilege to visit Anadolu Medical Center in Kocaeli, Turkey, about 30 minutes (without traffic) from downtown Istanbul. Anadolu is growing in reputation as one of the top hospitals in Turkey and beyond, attracting dozens of patients from Europe and Asia. They have had a prestigious overseas partner in Johns Hopkins Medicine for the last five years. I got a full tour, and was also given an insider’s look at what makes this hospital tick.

There are three reasons that Anadolu has become a shining star in the healthcare world: World class health care services, a patient-centered approach, and a hospital culture that emphasizes doing things the right way.

World Class Health Care

The first thing you notice at Anadolu are that the facilities are pristine, spacious and attractive. The tour started off with the reproductive medicine/fertility department, where Anadolu helps families with fertility treatments such as ISCI IVF at some of the most successful rates in the world. We saw the inpatient and outpatient wings, the same day surgery branch and emergency room, which are all fully outfitted with high end patient rooms that look like they belong in a luxury cruise liner rather than a hospital. Anadolu operates as a ‘hospital within a hospital’ – meaning that all departments rely on each other during the episode of care for a single patient. This means that each department has access to all the information, equipment and medical expertise it needs in real time, so patients don’t have to wait or come back again and again.

We then did a full walkthrough of the oncology services from radiation oncology to nuclear medicine and imaging – we got a chance to meet one of the highly trained doctors who runs their $6M Cyberknife machine. One of only three in Europe, Cyberknife can remove select tumors without making an incision. The oncology care at Anadolu has literally put it on the map. Cancer care here is truly world class, with dozens of patients traveling here for specialty oncology treatment from across Europe.

The last part of the tour was the chemotherapy ward, which was one of the most peaceful areas of the hospital. We’ve talked about the idea of patient-centeredness in healthcare before, but Anadolu reinvents the wheel in terms of making sure patients are having the best possible experience during their treatment. The entire building was designed so that every patient room has a seaside view, and wards have a common area with floor-to-ceiling glass walls that flood sunlight into the halls. Televisions with pretty much any language are available for international patients. Outside of design, a four star hotel is co-located on the hospital campus, and plans are underway for an expansion, day care facilities, a nursing home and hospice center so that everything is available for patients 24/7.  Every room has a call button that’s rigged to a mechanism to time how long nurses take to respond – in addition to complying with JCI standards, this is a neat way to keep patients happy. Drivers are available to transport patients and staff to and from the hospital.

The Right Stuff: Hospital Culture

The list of patient-focused aspects goes on and on. The bottom line is, the leadership at Anadolu simply get it. They understand that there is a right way to do things in health care. Putting patients’ interests and needs first. Measuring outcomes and using them to drive improvements. Combining practical design with a human touch. The staff members I was able to meet, from international service specialists from around the globe to globally-trained physicians in embryology, cardiology and oncology, were extremely helpful, patient, and thoughtful. There was a level of responsiveness throughout that you simply cannot find in US hospitals today.

It’s rare that we write a blog post without mentioning the amazing cost-savings available in medical travel, but after seeing this truly amazing hospital with my own eyes, I would not hesitate to pay full price to get care for myself or a family member. Fortunately, full price in Turkey is still a fraction of US prices.

Article by Naveen Rao. Naveen is a health care blogger focusing on insurance and health care policy, information technology and health2.0. He currently resides in Washington, D.C., where he is a consultant on quality improvement and compliance to several health care organizations. You can contact him at naveen.rao@myhealthglobe.com or follow him on Twitter @naveen101.

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HealthGlobe Insights #1: Focused Domestic Medical Travel

August 4th, 2011 · Bariatric Surgery, Corporate Medical Travel, Focused Medical Travel Benefits, Medical Tourism, Medical Travel, Medical Travel Benefits

One of the interesting growth areas in corporate medical travel is the decision by institutions and companies to implement a narrow approach where only one or two procedure areas are shifted to a medical travel coverage plan.  This allows the group to improve coverage and save costs without creating a major disturbance to the lives of the impacted employees.

This video is the first episode of HealthGlobe Insights.  In this series, HealthGlobe’s CEO Jeff Carter and CMO Peter Propp will discuss our experiences and views on the growing Medical Travel and Medical Tourism business.

A broad approach to medical travel can be destabilizing to an organization because they are concerned that the perception will be a focus on cost over quality.

Our customer is a New Hampshire based Hospital with a self-funded health plan.  They have experienced very high cost for Bariatric claims – Lap-Band procedures, etc. In our customer’s case, the management team had a need to improve quality in the area of bariatric procedures, without sending patients to Boston, one of the best and most expensive medical communities in the world.

HealthGlobe is delighted to be seen as a resource to focus on a specific problem and then develop and implement a creative solution for organizations who are facing challenges in providing quality care to their employees while controlling costs.

In the case of this customer looking to improve quality and reduce costs in the area of Bariatric procedures, we focused on Blossom Bariatrics, a member of HealthGlobe’s provider network.  We brought the HR director for the customer to Las Vegas to meet with the doctors and staff at Blossom, and they were very pleased with the team.

The result is a focused, narrow plan to provide bariatric procedures, when needed, via Blossom Bariatrics.

Bariatrics is an example of an elective procedure that can have a major impact on the patient’s quality of life.  Very often, these sort of elective procedures are great candidates for medical travel, whether the selected medical facility is domestic or overseas.

The Takeaway:  Focused Medical Travel Solutions

Actuarial tables and spreadsheets make it easy to count dollars and incidence of procedures. It is much more difficult to measure quality.  Human Resource managers need to balance the need to manage costs with the desire to always be providing a high quality of care for employees.  So counting outcomes at providers is just as important as counting the dollars.

HealthGlobe’s focus is on creating a climate where customers are solving their medical challenges at facilities that provide high quality care at a manageable price.  Focused Medical Travel can be a great way for companies who self-insure to establish a successful medical travel benefit. The near term result can be an improvement in quality and measurable cost savings.  And those results can be even more significant as the organization becomes more comfortable with the concept of Medical Travel.

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HealthGlobe Blogging Tour: Turkey

August 1st, 2011 · Health Policy, Healthcare, Healthcare reform, Medical Travel, Medical Travel in Turkey, Obamacare

As part of my travels this summer, I am spending a couple of weeks in Istanbul, Turkey. In addition to exploring one of the most historic and culturally unique cities in the world, I’m getting an opportunity to take an up close look at a foreign health care system. I will be visiting one of HealthGlobe’s premier partner hospitals, Anadolu Medical Center, to hear about their work with patients from around the globe and find out more about their world-class facilities.

Before I took off from Boston, I did some general background research on Turkey’s healthcare system. Here is a quick, high-level descriptive summary that might provide some context into upcoming posts about Anadolu.

The majority of the country uses public health care provided by the government. However, this public system has generally proven problematic over the last two decades, with inadequate access, limited insurance coverage, wide variation between urban and rural areas, and problems with waiting lists at public hospitals.  As a result, there have been broad developments in the private health care market in Turkey over the last decade. This includes both private insurers as well as private providers of care. In 2003, a government program to boost healthcare’s private sector was enacted to further promote competition, quality improvement and improve peoples’ access to health care services.

Turkey has come a long ways in the past quarter century, but there is ample room for improvement. While they have made significant strides in public health disease prevention efforts, improving immunization and mortality rates for a host of diseases, virtually everyone smokes – an unfortunate cultural custom shared by several of both its European and Asian neighboring countries. (One of my travel guides used this bit of dark humor to describe the situation: Who smokes more than a Turk? Two Turks.)

Opponents of ‘Obamacare’ in the US would be quick to point out that the move to privatize portions of Turkish healthcare have largely been very successful. In the 1990’s, private hospitals grew rapidly, and now represent nearly one third of hospitals in the country (though the actual percentage of beds is much lower). Outpatient clinics are mixed, as more than 60 percent of public physicians operate private practices. The insurance side is somewhat more problematic: Somewhere between 10 and 30 percent of individuals still lack health insurance. Only about two percent of Turkish citizens, typically the wealthiest, have private insurance, which is still concentrated almost entirely in big cities.

The Takeaway: The Turkish healthcare system has successfully leveraged private sector investment to improve the quality of, and access to, health care services. In upcoming posts, we’ll take a firsthand look at what this means in terms of high quality health care offerings in Turkey, including state of the art technology, US-trained physicians and surgeons, and patient-centric care at mind-blowing prices.

Note:  Most of these figures come from the World Bank Insurance Survey from 2008.

Article by Naveen Rao. Naveen is a health care blogger focusing on insurance and health care policy, information technology and health2.0. He currently resides in Washington, D.C., where he is a consultant on quality improvement and compliance to several health care organizations. You can contact him at naveen.rao@myhealthglobe.com or follow him on Twitter @naveen101.


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Self-Insurance, Stop-Loss and Medical Travel: Tools for Smart Financial Managers

July 22nd, 2011 · Corporate Medical Travel, Medical Travel, Stop Loss

HealthGlobe is starting a video series of interviews with industry experts who can shed light on changes in the global healthcare industry.  For our first interview, we are happy to present a two-part discussion with Keith Johnson, President of Stop-Loss Brokerage, Inc., a firm that specializes in creating self-insurance plans for companies of any size.

In part one of the video, Keith goes into just the right level of detail on how self-insurance works.  Managers with strong financial acumen and the capability to deal with managed risk can generate great financial benefit from implementing a self-insurance plan with reinsurance or stop-loss protection to make sure they can meet all of their employee healthcare commitments at the lowest possible cost.

 

 

In the second video, Keith goes into the details of how corporate managers who have already assessed and embraced the benefits of self-insurance can gain even more financial benefit from implementing a Corporate Medical Travel plan for a select number of procedures:

If you would like to work with Keith Johnson, RHU, President, Stop-Loss Brokerage, Inc., send him a note, or call him at:   502-245-1508.

HealthGlobe has a great White Paper on Corporate Medical Travel.  Click here to download “Increase Profitability by Offering a Corporate Medical Travel Benefit.” You can also call HealthGlobe at: 1 800 290 0197.

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Another Warning for Health Reform

July 7th, 2011 · affordable healthcare plan, Massachusetts healthcare, Medical Travel

The Attorney General of Massachusetts, Martha Coakley, is at it again with a new report that shows how health reform may not deliver on all of its promises of saving the system money. Her original healthcare report made headlines when it concluded that higher prices did not guarantee higher quality health care. Instead, health care providers here were simply bullying insurance companies into jacking up their payments. The second Massachusetts healthcare report, released at the end of June, focuses on establishing value in the health care market. It draws six major conclusions:

  1. Payment variations to providers are not correlated to quality (Same as the first report)
  2. Paying for everything, rather than item by item, does not always save money.
  3. People with more income spend more money on health care.
  4. Value based network design increases consumer engagement.
  5. PPO’s do not coordinate care as well as HMO’s.
  6. Effective quality improvements require several reforms (IT systems, infrastructure, payment, etc.)

A brief word on two of these conclusions:

Number Two: The conclusion that “global” or “capitated” payment will not always save money is hardly a revolutionary headline.  If the US health care system really wants to save money, it needs to bring down the price of health care procedures, which are outrageously expensive compared to most other countries in the world. For employers or insurers facing high costs, experimental payment solutions that do not result in a lower bill are hardly a reform from the way things are today.

Number Four: Value based insurance design is when an insurer decides that rather than offering a broad variety of choice to their members, they can offer a product that only has a few options (i.e. a “narrow network” of 1-2 hospitals and a short list of providers) and price it lower. Not every business sends people around the country, so saving 25 percent on a less shiny healthcare benefits package that most people won’t use makes sense. This resonates with the reality that health care typically poses complicated, confusing challenge to consumers, who crave more simplicity. If it costs less, even better. The important lesson here is simple, and it applies to far more than health care: Consumer engagement is not a function of making people understand – it’s about making healthcare easy and convenient. Think Apple.

Whether or not health reform delivers on its promises remains to be seen. What we can take away from the example of Massachusetts, who is in year five of its own health reform bill, is that it’s not going to get better right away. In the meantime, healthcare alternatives that are simpler, patient-oriented and more affordable will stand the test of time.

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HealthCare Reality: Bending the Curve Will Not Squash the Elephant

June 20th, 2011 · affordable healthcare plan, Cost Curve, Health Affairs Blog, healthcare cost curve, Medicare, Obamacare, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

Ask any health care expert how the health reform bill intends to lower costs and you’ll get a list of answers: bundling payments regionally based on quality rather than volume, introducing incentives to reduce rehospitalizations, increasing the size of risk pools through insurance expansion to lower prices for all. These all fit into an idea we’ve fallen in love with as a nation: bending the cost curve.

In  “The Mixed (De) Merits of ‘Bending the Cost Curve,’” a post on the Health Affairs Blog Joseph White dissects this questionable concept and examines the assumptions and implications behind our national proclivity to kick the can down the road when it comes to cutting costs. The analysis is summed up nicely in these lines (emphasis added):

One might expect that, with U.S. health care costs in 2008 sitting at 16 percent of GDP, and the next highest country just over 11 percent, politicians and business leaders and academics would have thought that the problem was that costs were too high at the time, rather than that they should be prevented from becoming too high in the future.  Why, then, would anyone focus on the “cost curve,” rather than the costs?

One logical answer is that it’s a lot less threatening to the medical care establishment to talk about slowing cost growth in the future than about taking away some of their incomes now.  One can have much more pleasant discussions, in which even the insurance companies will say they agree with the goal.  Conflict is delayed or, more precisely, submerged.

“The Mixed (De) Merits of ‘Bending the Cost Curve,’” Joseph White, Health Affairs Blog, June 17, 2011

As a nation we have grown reluctant to address the high costs we face today. Using popular rhetoric allows policymakers to pepper in a feel-good phrase and pseudo-economic jargon into the dialogue between the medical system, politicians and academics. It fits in with all the talk about our financial environment, appeases doctors and hospitals by avoiding the idea of lowering prices, and gets insurers on board to dress up the elephant in the room – lowering the price of health care in America.

Healthglobe has pointed this out before – it’s seen all over the place, from end of life care to CMS’s (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) unwillingness to fix the sustainable growth rate (SGR) – the policy that would amend prices based on volume and growth. CMS has punted on this issue for nearly 15 years instead of owning up and making cuts to payment rates. It’s a cynical view to be sure, but it is understandable why many folks feel that ideas to introduce “value” into our health care system — the ACO (Accountable Care Organization) concept for example — are nothing more than exercises in herding cats.

The truth is, we’ve become just as comfortable paying exorbitant prices to our medical providers as they’ve become accepting them. Lowering prices is unpalatable, so other approaches, such as targeting high cost regions for reform, have also been suggested. As long as prices in the US remain so much higher than the rest of the world, people will continue to explore alternative routes to care – medical travel to save patients 50 to 90 percent of costs is just one of these ideas.

Article by Naveen Rao. Naveen is a health care blogger focusing on insurance and health care policy, information technology and health2.0. He currently resides in Washington, D.C., where he is a consultant on quality improvement and compliance to several health care organizations. You can contact him at naveen.rao@myhealthglobe.com or follow him on Twitter @naveen101.

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