A new survey released by the Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council (MassMEDIC) and Cambridge Consultants, a technology product design and development firm, finds that a patient-centered and coordinated approach to healthcare could save billions of dollars. The survey also indicates care coordination will reduce wasteful spending in defensive medicine, inefficient claims processing, medical errors and emergency room services.
http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/survey-connected-health-could-cut-healthcare-costs-40-percent
It makes little sense to me that the current debate in DC about health reform presupposes that the health care business is fundamentally unsustainable, as it has yet to adopt many of the most widely recognized enhancements in operational efficiency that have redefined nearly every other information intensive industry in America since the early 1990's. If 40-percent of costs can be trimmed without totally overhauling the system, which would leave 1/6th of our economy to exist in a vacuum for several years as we wait to see if our blind overhaul worked, I think this must be allowed to play itself out as it did in every other market. If any policy measures are useful at this stage in the modernization of health care, they are gradual, incentive-based measures that would help break-through barriers created within the medical community by undefined guidelines and a perception that such innovative activity would involve too much risk. Several programs launched through the stimulus package were a good start, but will be much less consequential if too much is done too soon by politicians focused not on patient care, but rather on their personal legacies.
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