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Please check out a fairly recent (and pretty awesome) white paper written by Al Waxman, Lisa Suennen and Darlene Collins, three of my partners at Psilos Group, titled Cost, Quality and Alignment: A Step-Wise Plan to Reform and Transform Healthcare (published in September, 2009).

The paper was written during the heat of the debate over healthcare reform, last summer, well before either the Senate or the House passed their respective bills.  It was sent to many members of congress (many actually read it) and media editorial boards (many actually wrote about it).

The overall theme of the Waxman et al paper parallels the message I sent a couple of days ago to Senator Patty Murray (D-Washington).  It recommends an incremental approach to healthcare reform designed to achieve the following goals over the next 10 years:

1.  Reduce overall healthcare inflation to 3%

2.  Enable universal access

3.  End prior condition refusals for insurance and policy cancellation for sick people.

4.  Extend solvency of the Medicare Trust Fund beyond 2017

5.  Reduce medical errors

6.  Improve the US healthcare quality ranking from #35 in the world to #5.

7.  Stimulate investment in new healthcare technologies that improve healthcare quality and lower costs

As a practical solution the current versions of the Senate and House bills (and Obama’s slightly abridged plan) have serious problems in that we don’t know the cost effect of many of the individual provisions let alone whether as a whole either bill will rein in healthcare costs (in the state of Massachusetts, universal care seems to have had no impact on rising costs).  They (the Congress) seem to be attempting to solve all of the problems in the system with one fell legislative swoop with little or no proof that their ideas will lower medical inflation.  As I discussed in my previous post, healthcare reform is not financially viable without successfully reducing healthcare costs and inflation.

Logically, the Psilos team recommends an immediate focus on cost reduction that, if successful, would yield much of the long-term financial capital necessary for expanding access (read: health insurance for the 47 million uninsured in the US).  Note that they are not just offering ideas, but proven solutions.  Among others, they note the following areas as low hanging fruit:

1.  Management of the chronically ill, particularly those in Medicare (could yield $750 billion in savings over 10 years)

and

2.  Deployment of technology to eliminate hospital-based errors (recall my prior post on Atul Gawande and checklists, one such error reduction program), which could yield $7-$10 billion annually to Medicare

More advanced programs that could improve costs include:

1.  Performance-based reimbursement for providers

2.  Financial incentives for individuals to lead healthier lifestyles

3.  Deployment of Personal Health Records and individual patient information for real-time point-of-care access

Obviouisly there is much to discuss here, including the young companies that are developing the technologies and programs that make these ideas work.  In the meantime, my colleagues’ white paper, a truly non-partisan view of the healthcare crisis and reform is extremely informative as to what’s possible in the ongoing effort to control runaway healthcare costs.