Accountability, Responsibility and Change

$1.5 Trillion and Counting


A couple of weeks ago, Health Affairs reported that healthcare spending increased by $750 billion to $1.5 trillion. It was also predicted that by 2017 healthcare spending would increase to $4 trillion. Okay, can anybody without giggling too hard really admit that they can comprehend and understand exactly what $4 trillion means? Monopoly money... it has no meaning except for those that can figure out how to be part of that spending. Hospitals, health systems, medical device manufacturers, pharma, physicians, associations etc., all looking at what piece of the pie is theirs. The economist's know what that means. So what else are we to spend our money on?

Well, that kind of spending is unsustainable and will force concrete action to fix a broken healthcare system. Just what that will look like is any ones guess at this time. Don't fix it and we will have rationing, long waits and a national healthcare system where no one is cared for. And a dollar that so far south of the Euro that it will never come back. Government has enough trouble running Medicare and Medicaid now, what in good gosh almighty makes anyone think they can run a national healthcare system.

A bet and forecast for my money..... Like Chicago politics, once everyone figures out how they get theirs, healthcare reform will happen. Everybody wins except for the consumer......


Medicare Rates Are Cut!


Scream the headlines and the hospital administrators, national leaders decry the action. OK, what does it really mean. First, Medicare is not being cut. Second, it is still growing. Third,what was cut was the rate at which Medicare is growing. And fourth, it is just not the rate healthcare people want. How about instead of crying for what we don't have find ways to be more efficient and productive, reduce medical errors, promote standards of care and become more self sufficient and less whinny.


Having been outside of the hospital part of the healthcare industry now for a couple of years and reading and watching, I never realized how whinny hospital execs are. We are expecting someone else to fix our problems. Maybe its time as healthcare executives we stepped up to plate, reached consensus on a strategy and drove some real national policy agenda and change. Instead we are reactive and acting surprised when someone steps with a solution on issues that we should be leading and then we react with the why it will not work, not the why it will. Oh wait, if we did that we couldn't complain much anymore. No wonder no one takes the healthcare industry seriously. I am sure this really endures me to the industry.


IT Anyone?


Expensive... needed.... and the right thing to do. EMR, e-prescribng, RHOIs (which may be dead anyway) and a whole host of issues besides the technical ones. Seems to me to be the cost of doing business. We all agree that government wants IT, doctors and hospitals want IT, employers want IT from providers and national healthcare leadership want IT and the AHA wants government to pay for IT. Sorry, there I go again not being part of the solution but adding to the let someone else pay for what I need to do for my organization from a cost of doing business perspective.

My simple question is, so why is the government expected to provide the cash to hospitals, health systems and others to move to computerization? Money for IT might just be available if every hospital in the US didn't have to provide every service, piece of new technology, improved efficiency and productivity, reduced medical errors and improved customer satisfaction.


In the end....

These are not simple problems and do not have simple answers. I have made light and poked fun, and I am sure irritated a bunch of people along the way. But at the end of the day, unless we can come together, use a little common sense and ask what is right for all instead of what's in it for me, we could solve these problems. Maybe that's what Senator Obama has figured out, the American people have figured out and we are just waiting for everybody else to catch up.