On January 11, 2011, Boston Mayor Menino spoke about the City and mentioned two ways the City of Boston can save on the increasing costs of healthcare. His address titled the "State of the City 2011" was well attended by many government leaders, including Governor Patrick and Senator Brown.
During his speech, Mayor Menino highlighted two different measures to curb the cost of healthcare. The first is an initiative called Neighbor Care. He says, "Neighbor Care will increase the use of community health centers - providing more hours and more services in the neighborhoods." This initiative would also save healthcare dollars through channelling patients to the less expensive community health centers, as opposed to the higher cost big name hospitals. The idea is that common conditions can and should be treated at community health centers/hospitals, while the very specialized conditions would be referred out to the specialty hospitals.
Mayor Menino also spoke about the potential offering of health insurance to City employees that is modeled after the Group Insurance Commission (GIC) which is the self-insured health insurance plan available to State employees. He says "If Boston had the same plan design (as the State), we could save one million dollars a month." The GIC also has an innovative plan design which is comprised of three tiers of physicians. Physicians and facilities that have the highest quality and lowest cost measures are in the "top tier", which have the lowest copay to the patient. The low copay provides an incentive to a patient to goto the "top tier" high quality, low cost physician. The offering of a product like GIC is still in the works and not yet approved.
With the costs of healthcare soaring, many are continuing to find ways to curb the cost. What ideas have you come across?
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