Reviving Healthcare[1]- Article Review
This article[1] talks about Don Berwick M.D. who is being considered to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services. Through his work at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement he has advanced quality in healthcare.
His feelings is that clinicians simply do not think about the delivery of healthcare as happening with in a system. Doctors give great diagnosis. But that diagnosis is only as good as the system that brought him the data to review. There are labs and technicians that get sent materials to analysis. What if things get mixed up or not done well. Those are all part of the system that the clinician does not think about.
Berwick’s long time vision as a solution to Americans healthcare is a three pronged systems approach. These three prongs, called the Triple Aim, are:
- “Improve the individual experience of care.”
- “Improving the health of populations.”
- “Reducing the per capita costs of care for populations.”
The Barriers he sees to this success include:
- “Supply-Driven Demand.”
- “New technologies, including many with limited impact on outcomes.”
- “Physician-centric care.”
- Little or no Foreign competition to spur domestic change.”
If we agree that the current U.S. healthcare system is unsustainable and that the Triple Aim is the right approach there are three design components needed to reach success:
- “Recognition of a population as the unit of concern.”
- “Externally supplied policy constraints.”
- “An integrator to focus and coordinate services to help the population on all three dimensions at once.”
I really do feel that the US healthcare industry can not be sustained and needs major changes. This article make me feel that Berwick would be a great head for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and at last some one might start fixing this industry. I hope he succeeds.
As always if, you have questions or comments please feel free to contact me by leaving a comment below, emailing me, calling me, or leaving a comment on my website.
Bersbach Consulting
Peter Bersbach
Six Sigma Master Black Belt
http://sixsigmatrainingconsulting.com
peter@bersbach.com
1.520.829.0090
[1] Charles Kenney, “Reviving Healthcare,” Quality Progress, Vol. 43, No. 7, July 2010, pp. 30-35,
http://www.asq.org/quality-progress/2010/07/innovation/reviving-healthcare.html
Note: The website above is on the American Society for Quality website and to access it you need to be a member. But there are way to purchase the article from ASQ.
