One of the biggest challenges our nation faces is health care reform. Despite the development of the most innovative and significant advances in medical treatment, providing high quality, cost-effective and continuous patient care too often falls by the wayside.
Physician groups in Colorado and around the country have an opportunity in this time of change to proactively address the need for health system reform with a stronger emphasis on patient care and disease prevention.
Currently, heart disease is the leading killer in both Colorado and the nation, and 43 percent of all Medicare dollars are spent on heart disease. In Colorado, more than 9,000 people die from heart disease and stroke annually—that’s more than one life lost every hour. As the Colorado population expands and grows older, heart disease, stroke, and the economic costs associated with treatment and rehabilitation will also increase.
As a physician and a health care reform advocate I am encouraged by the Colorado Heart Healthy and Stroke Free: Reaching the Future 2005-2010 program. It is vital that individuals and state-level organizations take responsibility for improving heart health in their communities. Taking preventative steps like education and community outreach to stop the heart disease before it becomes a problem is a vital step and one that more communities need to make a priority.
The American College of Cardiology (ACC) shares the values put forward in this program. From a focus on patient value – transparent, high-quality and cost-effective care – coordination among sources and sites of care, and payment reforms that reward quality and ensure value. As physicians we need to empower our patients, and our patients need to take responsibility for their health through preventative measures.
Preventative health care can and should be part of health care reform because it not only leads to an overall better quality of life, but it reduces individual and taxpayer costs. In the current economic instability, we certainly need cost reduction. At the ACC we are committed to working with payers, Congress, state legislatures and other organizations to strengthen quality measures and expedited guidelines.
To provide the best quality care, data collection, reporting and evaluation are vital. This transparency translates into increased and proper use of guideline-recommended therapy and the streamlining of patient care across regions. Unnecessary procedures and treatments can also be reduced when the most cohesive and apparent information is available.
We have been given the tools to begin health care reform. Health information technology (IT) is becoming a reality. It is a matter of when and not if health IT becomes an everyday reality for the health care industry across the board. We, as physicians, must help the government and private business make the right choices on these emerging technologies. And patients must demand the implementation of these long awaited advances that save money and lives.
Electronic prescriptions have been shown over and over to save money and lives. According to a Harvard Medical School study, e-prescribing could save $845,000 a year for every 100,000 people filling prescriptions. The Institute of Medicine has estimated that more than 1.5 million Americans are harmed annually by drug errors. E-prescriptions would greatly reduce that number and already have. A 2007 Dana-Farber Cancer Institute e-prescription pilot program helped prevent 724 bad drug interactions or drug allergy issues.
At its finest, the U.S. health care system is the best in the world, and by utilizing the tools we have available and developing partnerships between physicians and patients based on a common goal, we can ensure that the U.S. health care system reaches its highest potential time and again.
Jack Lewin, M.D., is CEO of the American College of Cardiology.
