Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund, will provide a keynote at the Healthcare Financial Management Association's Annual National Institute on how to move the U.S. toward a high performance health system. The key, she says, is focusing on people.
At this session, Davis will facilitate a conversation with leaders of the country's foremost health organizations, who will share their vision and direction in advancing promising strategies for health system improvement. The panel will discuss the specific actions that can lead to higher quality, greater efficiency and improved access.
Davis' keynote will be based on a reform strategy released last week by the Commonwealth Fund, titled "Front and Center: Ensuring That Health Reform Puts People First." Davis says the report focuses the healthcare reform debate "where it really belongs."
"We have heard from stakeholders on all sides - insurers, doctors, hospitals, employers - about the effects reform might have on them, and these are all important points of views," Davis said. "However, we must keep the most important voice - the voice of the patient - front and center. Our health care system has to work for the people it is designed to serve."
According to Davis, right now, the healthcare system is broken and does not work for far too many Americans. "In order to achieve a high performance health system that provides high quality health care to all Americans, we need to change the perverse incentives in our system that reward more care, but not more efficient care or better outcomes for patients," she said.
A healthcare system that works for all people would extend affordable health coverage to everyone, and include system reforms to ensure that patients get the care they need, when they need it. "We need to reorganize our system so that everyone can enroll in a medical home to ensure that patients get all their recommended preventive care and that chronic conditions are treated," Davis added.
The new Commonwealth Fund health reform strategy focuses on the estimated 116 million working-age adults who report that they are uninsured or underinsured, have medical bill or debt problems, or experience difficulties obtaining needed care.
A national health insurance exchange with competing private plans and a new public plan has the potential to provide greater choices, better benefits, and more affordable premiums. If coupled with broad system reforms, the average family could save $2,314 a year by 2020, as the annual increase in health costs slowed from 6.7 percent to 5.5 percent. Cumulative national savings over the period 2010 to 2020 would be $3 trillion, compared with projected trends, according to the report.