The Leading Business Education Network for Doctors, Financial Advisors and Health Industry Consultants

BY DR. DAVID EDWARD MARCINKO MBA MEd CMP™

Sponsor: http://www.CertifiedMedicalPlanner.org

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Classic Definition: Despite rising costs, health care often is of poor quality. Evidence from a classic medical improvement outcomes study assessed care of patients with several chronic diseases. This study found that patients’ functional health status outcomes are similar to care rendered by specialists and generalists but that generalists use far fewer resources. Similar outcome at lower cost represents higher value.

Modern Circumstance: Current solutions to improving care quality may do more harm than good if they focus more on diseases than on people. Efforts to improve the parts (evidence-based care of specific diseases) may not necessarily improve the whole (the health of people and populations).

Expanding access to specialty care, for example, has been proposed as both a source of and a solution for deficiencies in quality of care. Primary care is touted as an essential building block of a high-value health care system even as it is undermined by systems attempting to improve the quality, effectiveness, and value of their health care..

Paradox Example: The above contradictions plague improvement efforts in health care systems around the world, particularly the United States The paradox is that compared with specialty care or with systems dominated by specialty medical care, primary care is associated with the following: (1) poorer quality care for individual diseases, yet (2) similar functional health status at lower cost for people with chronic disease, and (3) better quality, better health, greater health  equity and lower costs for whole peoples and populations.

And so, this contradiction plagues improvement efforts in health care systems around the world, particularly the United States.

Cite: Kurt Stange MD PhD and Robert Ferrer MD MPH

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