What are your top three?
by Lola Butcher
What are the top three strategies that will drive quality in health care while containing costs?
Three health care thought leaders weighed in on that question during a keynote session this afternoon.
Employers
Representing the employer community, Andrew Webber, president and CEO, National Business Coalition on Health,
identified:
- Payment reform.
- Consumer activation/empowerment/informed choice.
- Total quality management/continuous quality improvement.
Physicians
On behalf of America’s primary care physicians, John Tooker, MD, CEO, American College of Physicians offered up this list:
- Create strong primary care system
- Incorporate patients into primary care system (patient-centered medical home)
- Create a financing system that supports a strong primary care system and incorporates patients into that system.
Health care analyst
Meanwhile, the prominent economist Uwe Reinhardt, professor at Princeton University, suggested these:
- Health information technology that tracks physician orders to introduce physician accountability.
- Comparative cost-effectiveness assessment.
- Payment system reform (not pay-for-performance, but rather pay for treatment bundles rather than piecework.)
