Save Healthcare Now!

I urge us all to do everything we can to Save Healthcare Now!  I attended the Health Care Quality and Cost Council (HCQCC) - Full Council meeting last week on Wednesday to hear the latest on quality and cost.  This Council in Massachusetts is trying hard to solve the problems around rising healthcare costs in the Commonwealth.  Every time I attend a talk around this topic, I always leave the meeting a bit sad about the healthcare cost crisis that we are in and this time was no different.  In addition, I think about the fact that I had started following this issue about three years ago with my first exposure to this problem at the Massachusetts Medical Society Annual Conference in May 2008.  It is a disappointment that almost three years later, we don't seem to be much better off.

At the HCQCC Full Council Meeting last week, we were reminded of high-level ideas that are in the works to better the quality and cost of care, like ACO's, insurer/provider increase caps, tiering providers/select networks, cost transparency, global payments and risk sharing.  However, the highlight of the meeting for me was two repeated blaring alarms coming from the Inspector General, Gregory Sullivan who pressed that we have to do something NOW.  At the end of last year, there was a public forum for payment reform where public comments received used words like "cautiously" or "slowly" in talking about reform.  The Inspector General illustrated that a common family insurance plan that has a price tag of $21,000 is the equivalent of paying $10/hour from a paycheck!  And with the continued annual increase in healthcare premiums, healthcare affordability is getting farther out of reach and out of control.  While it would be nice to be "cautious" and "slow", we also have to consider that we have to do something NOW if we want to be able to control this crisis.

To me, this problem is so big that it needs EVERYONE to solve it; especially since we are all consumers in this problem.  We should all do a part as patients/consumers, employers, insurers, providers, government and service vendors.

What can we all do now to help lower the cost of healthcare for everyone?  Let's all be mindful of cost in our decisions.  In addition:

Patients/Consumers - Eat and be healthy.  Consider cost too when choosing a Provider.  Consolidate multiple appointments into fewer appointments, if possible.  Be prepared with a full list of what you want to talk about with the Provider.  Share publicly ideas to lower cost.

Employers - Incent employees to be healthy.  Consider selecting plan designs that encourages employees to consider cost when seeking care.

Insurers - Streamline processes (be lean) as much as possible to further lower admin cost.  Keep innovating with new quality plan designs.  Collaborate with other Insurers and Providers to do non-competitive tasks together.

Providers - Streamline processes (be lean).  Keep being thoughtful of cost in recommending and ordering care.  Collaborate with other Insurers and Providers to do non-competitive tasks together.

Government - Encourage, engage and support discussion in the healthcare ecosystem to identify ideas to lower cost.  Be ready to move on good ideas.

Service Vendors - Be innovative and create solutions/systems to lower cost.  Find ways to lower the cost of services billed to clients.

What other high-quality ideas can you think of to save on healthcare?