Politics
Out of context: Reply #11346
- Started
- Last post
- 33,771 Responses
- ukit0
Why do people keep saying there are no attempts at cost control? I would say the biggest one is something that was actually in the Stimulus bill, which may be why people overlook it, but it's still relevant - digitizing the entire medical records system.
Most hospitals right now amazingly still use paper and pen to keep medical records. All of this critical information is stored in big boxes of paper off in a room somewhere. There is no coordination between hospitals, and no aggregation of data so that you can analyze overall trends, standardize treatments, or do programmatic analysis of treatment efficiency.
http://www.openclinical.org/emr.…
"Electronic medical record systems lie at the center of any computerised health information system. Without them other modern technologies such as decision support systems cannot be effectively integrated into routine clinical workflow. National penetration of EMRs may have reached over 90% in primary care practices in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, but has been limited to 17% of physician office practices in the USA.
As Tony Abott (Australian Minister for Heath and Ageing) said in August 2005: "Better use of IT is no panacea, but there's scarcely a problem in the health system it can't improve"
Another example is the creation of an independent commission to oversee the growth of Medicare and make reforms as needed to keep costs in line without having to go through Congress where nothing gets done. They is what Sarah Palin called "a death panel." It's pretty funny to hear Republicans crying about how Obama wants to cut Medicare, when they were opposed to creating it and recently introduced a budget that would eliminate it entirely.
Third example, there is a program they are rolling out within Medicare called Medicare bundling. Essentially what this does is change the compensation model for doctors so that instead of getting paid for every single treatment they prescribe which leads to overprescribing expensive treatments, they will be paid for overall care of a patient over a given period of time. So compensation based on quality of care which is what a lot of people have been asking for for some time.
This is a pretty radical change in terms of how the industry does business so it will be implemented in Medicare as a testing ground first, but the goal is to roll it out to the entire industry if it's a success.
- Yeah because that change is one that doesn't step on the toes of any of their corp masters. ;)mathinc
- LOL, cmon, what are you like a born again left winger now?ukit
- Do you actually disagree with any of these though? They all seem pretty logical.ukit
- No I don't like government. It's not transparent to you that the health care bill didn't step on any of the benefactors? :)mathinc
- It in fact helps the benefactors?.. No?mathinc
- Helps and hurts...it's a compromise reflecting the reality of the American system where you aren't going to bring an industry to its knees overnight.ukit
- industry to its knees.ukit
- But if its a total sellout, why do you have aspects like the end to recision, which don't help the industry but put a burden on it.ukit