The dissatisfaction is palpable. It even reached the level of a Super Bowl ad. You know that when Jelly Roll and the Foo Fighters are involved — Power to the Patients — healthcare dysfunction has reached a crescendo. The Transparency in Coverage rule is not being followed by a majority of healthcare systems. It's virtually impossible to be a "consumer of healthcare" and compare prices. And prices can vary to a shocking degree — so can supplies of critical drugs.
A chronic shortage of Norditropin, a growth hormone, is leaving parents scrambling and desperate enough to buy it on the black market in Mexico. And some payers are requiring multiple pre-authorizations per month. For a chronic condition?! That makes no sense. Every test and procedure needs to be coded, so you have patients and doctors gaming the system by fudging codes in order to get them covered by insurance.
Overly complex systems create perverse incentives and nonsensical outcomes. Like in Congress, where the current incentive structure is to not bring bills to the floor for a vote. Most people love their doctor and their congressperson but hate the system they're a part of.
The dissatisfaction is palpable. It even reached the level of a Super Bowl ad. You know that when Jelly Roll and the Foo Fighters are involved — Power to the Patients — healthcare dysfunction has reached a crescendo. The Transparency in Coverage rule is not being followed by a majority of healthcare systems. It's virtually impossible to be a "consumer of healthcare" and compare prices. And prices can vary to a shocking degree — so can supplies of critical drugs.
A chronic shortage of Norditropin, a growth hormone, is leaving parents scrambling and desperate enough to buy it on the black market in Mexico. And some payers are requiring multiple pre-authorizations per month. For a chronic condition?! That makes no sense. Every test and procedure needs to be coded, so you have patients and doctors gaming the system by fudging codes in order to get them covered by insurance.
Overly complex systems create perverse incentives and nonsensical outcomes. Like in Congress, where the current incentive structure is to not bring bills to the floor for a vote. Most people love their doctor and their congressperson but hate the system they're a part of.
The dissatisfaction is palpable. It even reached the level of a Super Bowl ad. You know that when Jelly Roll and the Foo Fighters are involved — Power to the Patients — healthcare dysfunction has reached a crescendo. The Transparency in Coverage rule is not being followed by a majority of healthcare systems. It's virtually impossible to be a "consumer of healthcare" and compare prices. And prices can vary to a shocking degree — so can supplies of critical drugs.
A chronic shortage of Norditropin, a growth hormone, is leaving parents scrambling and desperate enough to buy it on the black market in Mexico. And some payers are requiring multiple pre-authorizations per month. For a chronic condition?! That makes no sense. Every test and procedure needs to be coded, so you have patients and doctors gaming the system by fudging codes in order to get them covered by insurance.
Overly complex systems create perverse incentives and nonsensical outcomes. Like in Congress, where the current incentive structure is to not bring bills to the floor for a vote. Most people love their doctor and their congressperson but hate the system they're a part of.
Hospitals are fighting tooth and nail against a bill in Congress that would require price neutrality. Right now, Medicare pays hospitals twice as much for the same procedure as it pays non-hospitals. This is a factor in consolidation (see failed M Fairview and Sanford "merger") which prevents competition and markets from solving problems. There are downsides to rural communities for price neutrality, so we'll see what happens.
Have you been to a hospital ER lately? It can be more painful than what brought you in. The waiting spills out of the waiting room and into a hallway. There aren't enough rooms. The staff is overwhelmed. Unless you have an acute life-ending problem, it takes hours to be seen. We're in the midst of a mental health epidemic in which most therapists don't take insurance and the ER is a first line of defense. Again, the incentives for prevention are not in place, so we rely on the emergency room.
“Despite spending far more on healthcare than other high-income nations, the US scores poorly on many key health measures, including life expectancy, preventable hospital admissions, suicide and maternal mortality. And for all that expense, satisfaction with the current healthcare system is relatively low in the US,” writes Robert H. Shmerling, M.D., Senior Faculty Editor, Harvard Health Publishing.
Part of the problem is coordination of care. Who's responsible for that? It has largely fallen on patients. Nearly all of us are compromised in some way that prevents us from navigating the health bureaucracy. We don't have medical degrees, and often the very mental health issue we are trying to treat prevents us from treating it.
Hospitals are fighting tooth and nail against a bill in Congress that would require price neutrality. Right now, Medicare pays hospitals twice as much for the same procedure as it pays non-hospitals. This is a factor in consolidation (see failed M Fairview and Sanford "merger") which prevents competition and markets from solving problems. There are downsides to rural communities for price neutrality, so we'll see what happens.
Have you been to a hospital ER lately? It can be more painful than what brought you in. The waiting spills out of the waiting room and into a hallway. There aren't enough rooms. The staff is overwhelmed. Unless you have an acute life-ending problem, it takes hours to be seen. We're in the midst of a mental health epidemic in which most therapists don't take insurance and the ER is a first line of defense. Again, the incentives for prevention are not in place, so we rely on the emergency room.
“Despite spending far more on healthcare than other high-income nations, the US scores poorly on many key health measures, including life expectancy, preventable hospital admissions, suicide and maternal mortality. And for all that expense, satisfaction with the current healthcare system is relatively low in the US,” writes Robert H. Shmerling, M.D., Senior Faculty Editor, Harvard Health Publishing.
Part of the problem is coordination of care. Who's responsible for that? It has largely fallen on patients. Nearly all of us are compromised in some way that prevents us from navigating the health bureaucracy. We don't have medical degrees, and often the very mental health issue we are trying to treat prevents us from treating it.
Hospitals are fighting tooth and nail against a bill in Congress that would require price neutrality. Right now, Medicare pays hospitals twice as much for the same procedure as it pays non-hospitals. This is a factor in consolidation (see failed M Fairview and Sanford "merger") which prevents competition and markets from solving problems. There are downsides to rural communities for price neutrality, so we'll see what happens.
Have you been to a hospital ER lately? It can be more painful than what brought you in. The waiting spills out of the waiting room and into a hallway. There aren't enough rooms. The staff is overwhelmed. Unless you have an acute life-ending problem, it takes hours to be seen. We're in the midst of a mental health epidemic in which most therapists don't take insurance and the ER is a first line of defense. Again, the incentives for prevention are not in place, so we rely on the emergency room.
“Despite spending far more on healthcare than other high-income nations, the US scores poorly on many key health measures, including life expectancy, preventable hospital admissions, suicide and maternal mortality. And for all that expense, satisfaction with the current healthcare system is relatively low in the US,” writes Robert H. Shmerling, M.D., Senior Faculty Editor, Harvard Health Publishing.
Part of the problem is coordination of care. Who's responsible for that? It has largely fallen on patients. Nearly all of us are compromised in some way that prevents us from navigating the health bureaucracy. We don't have medical degrees, and often the very mental health issue we are trying to treat prevents us from treating it.
“The current US healthcare system has a cruel tendency to delay or deny high-quality care to those who are most in need of it but can least afford its high cost,” writes Shmerling. “This contributes to avoidable healthcare disparities for people of color and other disadvantaged groups.” Ouch.
We think of our system as supremely innovative. But it's often a disincentive to innovation. A transformative way to treat heart attack patients at M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Medical Center is a mobile unit that's a medical and technological marvel. Yet the most daunting part of developing it was getting health centers to collaborate and figure out who would pay, who would get paid, who was liable, and so on and so forth.
Enough about the diagnosis. In the immortal words of Jelly Roll, "I want to tell you that the windshield is bigger than the rearview mirror for a reason." What do we do?
“The current US healthcare system has a cruel tendency to delay or deny high-quality care to those who are most in need of it but can least afford its high cost,” writes Shmerling. “This contributes to avoidable healthcare disparities for people of color and other disadvantaged groups.” Ouch.
We think of our system as supremely innovative. But it's often a disincentive to innovation. A transformative way to treat heart attack patients at M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Medical Center is a mobile unit that's a medical and technological marvel. Yet the most daunting part of developing it was getting health centers to collaborate and figure out who would pay, who would get paid, who was liable, and so on and so forth.
Enough about the diagnosis. In the immortal words of Jelly Roll, "I want to tell you that the windshield is bigger than the rearview mirror for a reason." What do we do?
“The current US healthcare system has a cruel tendency to delay or deny high-quality care to those who are most in need of it but can least afford its high cost,” writes Shmerling. “This contributes to avoidable healthcare disparities for people of color and other disadvantaged groups.” Ouch.
We think of our system as supremely innovative. But it's often a disincentive to innovation. A transformative way to treat heart attack patients at M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Medical Center is a mobile unit that's a medical and technological marvel. Yet the most daunting part of developing it was getting health centers to collaborate and figure out who would pay, who would get paid, who was liable, and so on and so forth.
Enough about the diagnosis. In the immortal words of Jelly Roll, "I want to tell you that the windshield is bigger than the rearview mirror for a reason." What do we do?
No single entity or portion of the sector is to blame for how broken the system is. Yet everyone is responsible for it. We all need to own it, and ask hard questions. "Are we adding complexity, or taking it away? How are we growing or increasing margins? And at whose expense? Are we leveraging a fee for service model or moving to value based care? Are we creating transparency or obfuscation?
We're proud to work with a lot of companies in healthcare who are trying to improve it — from device manufacturers to brokers to providers to payers to distributors and consultants. We ask these questions of them as we do of us. We do it because the system needs fixing. It needs to be disrupted for the good of why we have it in the first place: for the patients we all are and will become.
— Authored with Chuck Kelly, Contributing Editor
No single entity or portion of the sector is to blame for how broken the system is. Yet everyone is responsible for it. We all need to own it, and ask hard questions. "Are we adding complexity, or taking it away? How are we growing or increasing margins? And at whose expense? Are we leveraging a fee for service model or moving to value based care? Are we creating transparency or obfuscation?
We're proud to work with a lot of companies in healthcare who are trying to improve it — from device manufacturers to brokers to providers to payers to distributors and consultants. We ask these questions of them as we do of us. We do it because the system needs fixing. It needs to be disrupted for the good of why we have it in the first place: for the patients we all are and will become.
— Authored with Chuck Kelly, Contributing Editor
No single entity or portion of the sector is to blame for how broken the system is. Yet everyone is responsible for it. We all need to own it, and ask hard questions. "Are we adding complexity, or taking it away? How are we growing or increasing margins? And at whose expense? Are we leveraging a fee for service model or moving to value based care? Are we creating transparency or obfuscation?
We're proud to work with a lot of companies in healthcare who are trying to improve it — from device manufacturers to brokers to providers to payers to distributors and consultants. We ask these questions of them as we do of us. We do it because the system needs fixing. It needs to be disrupted for the good of why we have it in the first place: for the patients we all are and will become.
— Authored with Chuck Kelly, Contributing Editor
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Disrupting for good.
Helping brands disrupt the status quo — for the better health of individuals, communities and our environment.
Disrupting for good.
Helping brands disrupt the status quo — for the better health of individuals, communities and our environment.
Disrupting for good.
Helping brands disrupt the status quo — for the better health of individuals, communities and our environment.