As the healthcare industry works to attain the so-called Triple Aim of affordability, access and quality, doctors will be key said Christine Cassel, MD, Thursday during a leadership conference in Maine.
As a presenter at the Maine Health Management Coalition’s (MHMC) “Leading Maine to Better Health” conference, Cassel, who will end her tenure as president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the ABIM Foundation next year, talked about the role of doctors in meeting the goals of the Triple Aim.
[See also: ABIM leader to step down in 2013.]
Health policy experts, she said, used to say the industry couldn’t achieve all three goals of the Triple Aim; two, maybe, but not all three. “Now we know that’s not true,” she told an audience gathered at the University of Southern Maine in Portland. “But what is true is I’m confident we can’t get all three without getting the doctors on board – and not kicking and screaming, but fully embracing the goals of this transformation.”
Doctors, she said, face many challenges in leading the way to achieving the Triple Aim but there are inspiring role models out there. As examples, she cited those doctors who choose to work toward certification and those that participate in Choosing Wisely, a campaign developed by ABIM in partnership with Consumer Reports and a number of medical societies. The program seeks to get patients, doctors and others in the medical profession to think and talk about overuse and misuse of healthcare resources.
[See also: New campaign seeks to curb unnecessary healthcare services and Physician groups identify 45 common and often unnecessary services.]
At the close of Cassel’s presentation, she was joined on stage by Lisa Letourneau, MD, the executive director of Maine Quality Counts, and Elizabeth Mitchell, MHMC’s CEO, who was just elected to the National Quality Forum’s Board of Directors.
Letourneau announced that MHMC, Maine Quality Counts and other partners will be participating in the Choosing Wisely campaign by launching an initiative whose parameters have yet to be determined.