By Mark Thill
What are we going to do about it?
Mark Thill
An article in a January issue of the Wall Street Journal carried this headline: “Health Care’s Bipartisan Problem: The Sick Are Expensive and Someone Has to Pay.” Simply stated. Seems like we can fuss all we want, but the fact of the matter is, sick people are expensive. And keeping healthy people well isn’t cheap either.
When people outside the industry ask me what I do, what we write about, I tell them that everything – everything – we do at the Journal of Healthcare Contracting ultimately comes down to answering one question: How can this country provide the highest-quality care to the greatest number of people in the most cost-effective way? In the end, that’s the question all of you think about too. Supplying answers to that question is your job.
As I write this, we’re not sure of the fate of the Affordable Care Act. Lots of people want to get rid of it – many, I suspect, simply because it’s associated with President Obama. That’s fine, but how are they going to answer that lingering question? The easy way? Ignore it.
The more difficult way: Work at improving the way healthcare is delivered. This is the stuff that much of the public isn’t aware of. I’m talking about bundled payments. Readmission penalties. Accountable care organizations. Value-based purchasing. Closer to home, there’s group purchasing, standardization, value analysis, and so forth.
Trying to be smarter in the way we deliver healthcare means working hard, working with others, making painful adjustments to our routines. I hope our lawmakers take that into consideration before tossing out all the work that’s been done over the past few years.