Leaders on Beacon Hill should know that one of the key factors driving up health care spending is poorly managed and uncoordinated care delivery. Too often, patients are getting treatment from multiple providers that don’t talk to each other and lack any incentive to work together to keep costs down. This raises the overall price tag, and doesn’t result in better care.
Population health management — that is, coordinating health care in a more organized and informed fashion — is critical to improving results, and will entail three key factors: identifying and supporting the sickest patients, minimizing or preventing disease progression, and promoting a culture of health.
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"measure providers on the quality of services rendered" I love the way the supposed experts throw around the word "quality" without really having a way of measuring it. Do they really think the limited indicators now in use actually measure quality? They actually encourage providers to focus resources on them taking away resources from problems that may be equally important to the patient care. They, of course, ignore a major problem in all of this patient compliance. The cost of the most commonly prescribed non-generic drugs increased by 26% last year. The state has no way to control this and the federal government is too corrupt to do anything about it. If the patient cant afford the appropriate med are you advocating that providers pay for it? But they are cutting back on provider reimbursement so where should the money come from. In one recent study as hospital did pay for meds and compliance was still poor. Should these patients be forced to take there meds? How can you penalize providers for this behavior? It is obvious that the so called expert writing editorials like this have spent little or no time in actual patient care.